


Where We Find Home

by RiverDeNile



Series: Love Is [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Decisions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Friendship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Mpreg, Reunions, Secrets, Separations, Slow Burn, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:53:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 59,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21855580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverDeNile/pseuds/RiverDeNile
Summary: After the events of the Greatest Weapon, Harry and Severus head as far away from one another as they can, each running from the wreckage that the war and Voldemort left them. There's only so far you can run, however, before you find yourself back where you began -- this time, hopefully, a little wiser and with a few souvenirs.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Series: Love Is [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1267154
Comments: 183
Kudos: 158





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a sequel to The Greatest Weapon. Please, please read that one first. This will make absolutely no sense if you don't. 
> 
> Also, please note the tags -- there will be a fair number of OCs in this, plus mpreg, so if that isn't your cup of tea, well... don't say I didn't warn ya. 
> 
> I really did want to try to have more chapters ready for you before the end of the year, but this is what I have. I do hope you enjoy! I can't promise a better or more consistent writing schedule this time around, as I'm still dealing with chronic pain and major depressive disorder, but I can absolutely promise that I will keep plugging away at it, no matter what. I'm putting a lot of love into this. <3

McGonagall sat at the head of the staff table and she stared down the length of the Great Hall. Her hands clawed at one another, twisting in her lap as she waited for the first years.

The room was not as full as it had been in previous years. It had been only a handful of weeks since the Battle of Hogwarts and, while they had put a great deal of work into repairing the building itself, many of the scars of the battle remained. Some students had chosen not to return (or their parents had made the choice for them). Some students were still injured and undergoing treatment at St. Mungo’s. Some would never return, but would, instead, become part of a list of names they would all endeavour to remember. 

A plaque had been hastily erected in the main hall, listing the names of all those who had fallen. It was a short list, thankfully, but she thought it wise to keep them, and the event, in the thoughts of all current and future students. She did not want history to repeat itself once again.

McGonagall was not going to be Albus Dumbledore.

She had looked into Albus’s pensieve. After Severus had left without any notice whatsoever, taking any information he had found within the pensieve with him, she had been left with few options – and the one she had chosen was to violate Albus’s wishes that Severus be the only one to view his memories.

They were… not what she might have imagined.

Had Albus been there to defend himself, he would have reminded her that he had been poisoned by Voldemort and that he had had no control over his actions. McGonagall saw all of it unfold in his pensieve. But she would have, in return, reminded him that she had known Albus Dumbledore for a very, very long time and she could see the progression of his memories. The poison had not greatly changed his actions nor his behaviour. She could see that now. She could see that he had always had an eye for how best to turn a situation to the Greater Good, which, in most cases, happened to coincide with his own benefit, and how best to use a person to facilitate the outcome he sought.

She was now headmistress and she had become a professor because of his words and his actions, his hints and his prods, but the risks in pushing a young girl into a teaching role were minimal compared to what he had organized for Harry Potter. 

She had always imagined that Harry Potter was being, perhaps, slightly dramatic in his few descriptions of his youth before Hogwarts. Not so, she had learned, and more. The poor boy had been pushed and shoved and coerced into nearly every scrape he had ever fallen into, and worse, as being the prisoner to Voldemort was not as she had hoped it to be – a dank cell, isolation and neglect. Instead, it was only now that the boy in question was gone that she learned of everything that Harry Potter had endured over those few months and of how little support he had received on his return. No wonder Harry had left, had vanished into thin air just as quickly as Snape had. But they hadn’t left together, no. Something had caused a schism between them and now they were both gone.

She knew that Snape had bought himself a one-way trip to Tibet, alone, and she knew that Harry Potter had exchanged a decent portion of his Gringotts accounts into Muggle money and then… nothing. No trace of him. No magical trace, at least, and she didn’t have any Muggle connections to exploit, nor did she have a clear idea of Muggle systems of travel. Had he left on one of their flying machines? A boat? He was off the British Islands, regardless, and lost to the winds. 

They were not the only ones gone from Hogwarts. Sprout was gone. Hagrid was missing. Her staff line-up was left in shambles, but she had done her best to assemble a rag-tag team as quickly as possible. She had on staff two ghosts, a werewolf, an exonerated murderer, a centaur, and a pupil just short of finishing (in fact, Neville would be finishing his final courses and exams concurrent with teaching all but the final year of Herbology). An odd hodgepodge, certainly, but she was not going to be the headmistress to lose a full year.

Minerva shook her head. Albus was laughing somewhere. She knew it. A fine mess he’d left her, as usual.

Hogwarts must continue so that, perhaps, one day, a few lost souls might find their way home.

The doors to the Great Hall burst open and she straightened her spine, raising her head to gaze down the length of the room. The heads of the seated students turned. The room’s chatter quieted to a hushed rumble of speculation, and the new students crept forward. Firenze, who was now charged with accompanying the first years from the train platform to Hogwarts, kept to the doorway, as he had chosen to abstain from a place at the head table. The new students filed down the hall and came to a stop before the head table to stare up at her.

She took a deep breath and stood.

A new year had begun.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: I have never been to Tibet or to China. I have done my best to research as much as I could, but please let me know if I've made any serious missteps. If you have any advice for me, I'd be thrilled to hear from you.  
> 

Snape blew out a long breath at an errant lock of hair that had fallen into his face. He had tied it up earlier in the day, but the hours he had put into the school’s garden had apparently drawn it loose. His hands were far too dirty for him to consider putting them anywhere near his head and so he found himself at an impasse on how to deal with this predicament. He had been tempted the night before to cut it short in the style of most of the other occupants at the hidden mountain school, but had found himself hard put to do so.

When he had first arrived in Lhasa, it had taken him nearly a full day to orient himself to his new surroundings. He was something of an oddity; dressed as he was in his dark wizarding robes, he certainly did not look like a local but also did not look like a typical western tourist. He should have put more thought into his journey, but… well, it had been rather impromptu. With his head cleared by the thinner mountain air, he realised just what he had hurled himself into and he was grateful that he had had the forethought in his youth to learn a passable translation charm. He would have been utterly lost without it.

He hadn’t even taken the time difference into account before leaving, which had dropped him into Lhasa before daybreak. There had been nearly no one awake, no shops open, the streets dead and buildings silent. It had taken him hours to locate a wizarding district, which, similarly to in the UK, was tucked away from the muggle districts by a series of magical barriers, but by mid-day he had finally found a shop that rented owls and sent a message to his friend, Niàn Zhēn.

It had taken a few hours, but the large eagle-owl had finally returned, carrying a surprised but delighted response. Snape then found himself having to locate a floo, which thankfully operated more or less in the same manner to which he was accustomed. He stepped in and, tossing a handful of floo powder, said the name of Niàn Zhēn’s school, fervently hoping he was pronouncing it correctly.

The school was named Zhēnxiàng and, to the best of his orienting abilities, seemed to be located in the north of Tibet, tucked in a deep valley between several mountains with no obvious road or path outward. Snape doubted the large central stone building or the scattering of smaller structures required much camouflage from Muggles at all. It was unlikely anyone would be so far remote as to accidentally discover the hidden complex. 

Due to overlooking mountains, the school received only a few hours of direct sunlight at midday and the air was quite thin and chilled. In his first days, Snape had routinely become lightheaded when ascending stairs or attempting anything more vigorous than changing his shirt. The school had only a handful of attending students, all between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, and Niàn Zhēn had explained to him that they took perhaps upwards of ten students a year and were generally overlooked in favour of the larger wizarding schools in Eastern China. Those few who attended came to specialise in either potions or herbology, as their climate and flora were unique to other schools in Asia and provided ample opportunity for innovation.

Upon his arrival, Snape had explained to his befuddled friend, who turned out to be a relatively tall, robust man in his mid-fifties with pronounced laughter lines around his pale eyes and a quick and easy smile, that he wasn’t there on holiday, that he was, in fact, imposing on their good graces for what would likely be an indefinite time and perhaps he could assist with brewing or research. Niàn Zhēn had looked him up and down and declared that some air and sunshine would do him wonders and he had put Snape to work nearly immediately helping Qingling, the diminutive, wizened woman responsible for their extensive gardens.

Snape soon found himself working in these same gardens every morning, from daybreak to the early afternoon, when the sun set behind the western mountain. It had been incredibly taxing at first, as the air was thin and he was used to indoor pursuits. He was fatigued most of the time and his entire body ached, likely due to the new physical labours. But Snape was pleased that after several weeks, he could manage most tasks assigned him and he usually had a reserve of energy in the afternoon to join his friend in his potions laboratory.

He had also been feeling unwell most mornings, nauseated and often suffering extremely inconvenient heartburn, something he had never been troubled with before. It was likely the new environment, new atmosphere, and new food. He would adjust.

Snape blew out a frustrated breath again, trying to dislodge the strand of hair from where it had curled against his nose, but the hair remained attached. He was absolutely going to cut it all off. He’d do it that moment if he had shears in his hand.

“Ai! Let me help you with that.”

He startled as Qingling tugged at his sleeve. She crooked her fingers impatiently at him and he bent over somewhat awkwardly to give her a better reach as she pulled a pin from her own hair, which was coiled in a tight bun, low on her neck, and she gestured at him rather violently with it. She tugged him down further and stuck her tongue between her teeth as she secured his hair properly, giving a satisfied nod as she released him.

“There. Why do you have such long hair? Loose! You’re asking for trouble. Wear a hat! You’re too tall and too pale and the sun can’t help but get you all the way up there.”

“Thank you,” Snape said as he brushed off the dirt from his hands against his outer robes. 

The robes were a dull brown and a little mud hadn’t hurt them yet, as that was precisely the point of them. Under the brown robe, he wore the clothes that had been given to him – a knee length tunic in a deep maroon and roomy black trousers. They were warm and thickly woven, well suited to the cold mountain air, but they were loose and Snape always felt as if he were swimming in them, so different were they from his normally close-fitting underlayers. They made him feel exposed, although he was entirely well covered.

Qingling peered up at him and poked him in the ribs with a short finger.

“You didn’t eat this morning.”

“I felt unwell. I’m fine now.”

“Mm hm.” She poked at him again and he took a step away from her as she looked him up and down. “So you say. You eat almost nothing and yet, look at you. You’ve gone puffy. All about in the face.”

He raised a hand to his cheek and patted himself self consciously. “Am I?”

“Mm hm,” she repeated and narrowed her eyes. She gave him a long look again and said, “You’re a man, right? I know things are getting a bit,” she waved her hand through the air, “nowadays, but you’ve got the usual parts? The usual _lack of parts?”_

“I… That is… absolutely none of your business.” He turned away from her and knelt down to continue the work he had previously interrupted, weeding the rows of tall kidney bean plants. She huffed loudly and stomped her foot and he ignored her completely.

“Fine, stranger. Keep your secrets. But if you’re going through what I think you’re going through, you’ll be needing my help sooner rather than later. It’s one of Grandmother Qingling’s many skills.” She poked at one of the plants and the leaves rustled under the assault. “You’ll be wanting to eat a lot of these.”

She turned away and shambled off toward the far end of the garden and Snape sat back on his heels to stare after her.

“Ridiculous,” he said to himself and went back to work.

Snape continued to work his way down the rows of plants, weeding what dared to grow unwanted in the garden, until the sun slipped behind the western mountain. He stood and stretched out his sore back, and then he carried the basket of weeds over to the hutch where Qingling kept her family of hares and left the basket there for her to later find. 

He scanned the gardens for her, but she had gone in at some point and his eyes only found a few students who were left doing similar chores to his own. Several of them stared at him rather openly and he nodded brusquely at the few he passed on his way over to Niàn Zhēn’s laboratory, which was a round, squat stone building set farther from the central building than most of the other outbuildings. Snape didn’t appreciate their stares. He was, of course, used to being stared at – he had been an object of curious revulsion since his early childhood, even by those other unwashed, unkempt children who had lived in Spinner’s End. He was different. He had always been different. But now, he felt fully alien. He was all too aware than he had not been invited to this place, that he was encroaching on their goodwill, and that his welcome there was tenuous at best.

At home, he could have sneered in response to a student’s stares or called them out publicly for their audacity. He could have taken house points or administered a detention. But it was rare for a student to keep up that sort of behaviour for long. He had inspired fear and through that fear, he had earned himself a reprieve from most of the stares and the vile comments that had followed him since his youth. He had had a certain amount of power at Hogwarts, bred through his role, but also bred through familiarity and comfort. That castle had been his home for the better part of his life and he knew every inch of it. Despite everything, it was where he had felt safest.

Now, he had put himself somewhere new, somewhere so completely outside his comfort zone that he might as well have flung himself onto an entirely new planet. He had exchanged years of letters with Niàn Zhēn, but they had never met, and their correspondence had always been about potions – they had exchanged tips, traded innovations, sought second opinions on on-going experiments, berated those who dared to call themselves potioneers and who simultaneously failed to live up to their standards. They had never _talked._ They had never shared anything overtly personal, not that Snape had ever had the inclination to willingly share anything personal with anyone, ever (except perhaps one person, but… that was in the past now, wasn’t it).

Snape had never before ventured as far as Ireland. And now here he was, sandwiched between tall mountains, wearing another’s clothing, sleeping under bedding that smelled faintly of yak, breathing air that tasted nothing of ocean. 

He knocked on the thick wooden door and inside, his friend called out cheerfully, “Come in!”

He pushed open the door and stepped into the dim coolness of the round stone building. The walls were thick stone and the roof was pointed and vented, but the scent inside was pure potions. Snape breathed in deeply and felt his shoulders relax from where they had nestled around his ears.

“Ah! Severus! Have a seat!” Niàn Zhēn pulled out a chair and gestured at it. “You look as if you might have had too much sun, my friend.”

“I’m fine,” Snape said, although he sat down and allowed himself to slump slightly.

“Of course! You’re adapting well. Have some tea.”

Snape glanced over at the squat metal tea pot and helped himself to a small cup of dark, smoky tea. He sipped it slowly.

Niàn Zhēn checked his cauldron and set himself a timer charm before he helped himself to a cup of tea as well and settled himself into a chair near to Snape’s. He reached out and set his hand against Snape’s forearm and gave it a small squeeze.

“How are you settling in, then? Qingling tells me she’s concerned for you. That you aren’t eating as you should.”

Snape shook his head. “I’m fine. I’ve been… I’ve been tired – likely the elevation – and my stomach has perhaps been a trifle unwell, but that is likely the newness of the food. I’ll adjust.”

“Of course, you will,” his friend’s eyes scanned up and over him and Snape sipped at his tea, averting his gaze.

“Of course, you will,” he repeated and patted Snape’s arm before withdrawing his hand to cradle his tea. “I have been meaning to ask you, the children are interested in learning more about you, or rather, learning more about where you are from. Would you be willing to teach a small class on the differences you have noted between our wizarding culture and your own? You could prepare a short analysis and then take questions? If you are willing, of course.”

“I… yes, I suppose I could.”

“Excellent! I was thinking that we could perhaps have you teach a class on British potioneering, as there are some marked differences in the styles. And you have experience in defensive magic, do you not? How would you feel about joining Master Shí in his defense classes? Who knows, you might combine the two forms to create a whole new defensive style!”

Master Shí taught a series of martial arts to the students and, while Snape had yet to exchange more than a handful of words with the stoic man, Snape was impressed by the integration of magical and physical arts. 

“I would be…” Snape hesitated. “Yes, I think I would enjoy such a partnership.”

“Excellent!” Niàn Zhēn grinned at him. “We will make a home for you, my friend, here in our little family.”

“Yes,” Snape turned the small cup in his hands and allowed himself to believe it. “Perhaps you will at that.”

* * *

Harry pushed open the heavy metal bulkhead door and flinched as the bright sunlight pierced his bloodshot eyes. He glanced around the deck at the people lined up to take the gangway off the cruise ship and down onto the port, but it was debarkation day and the people were all busy double-checking their bags and paying him no mind, so he lifted a hand to shade his eyes and quickly cast a wordless spell to darken the lenses of his glasses. Eyes now protected from the bright sun, he glanced out at the city. It reminded him of London, with its odd mixture of tall glass skyscrapers and its short stone buildings with tarnished copper roofs.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and got in line, ignoring those who tried to make small talk with him. His stomach churned and his head pounded, and he wished he had had the forethought to stock up on Hangover Cure before he’d left Diagon Alley. He couldn’t remember how to make it, not that he had any of the supplies with him. He barely had anything at all with him beside the glamoured passport, which claimed he was a twenty two year old grad student, and a cheap vinyl wallet with a single plastic card, given to him by Gringott’s, and about two thousand Canadian dollars. The only other thing he had in his backpack was a change of clothes, bought in the souvenir shop, and five small bottles of alcohol, pilfered from the mini bar and wrapped up in two monogrammed hand towels. 

His wand was tucked up the sleeve of his hoodie in a narrow pocket he had handsewn several nights before, with a tiny sewing kit he had gotten for free from the service desk aboard the cruise. They had also given him a toothbrush and toothpaste and a comb, which was kind of them, although useless to him. His magic had taken care of most of his needs in the two week Atlantic crossing as well as in the week before that as he laid low in London, sure someone would come looking for him. No one had.

Maybe they were letting him go. Maybe McGonagall had realised that Harry had done his duty and was letting him leave. She wasn’t Dumbledore. She wasn’t going to track him. And maybe, a small, snide voice in his head said, she just didn’t care.

Maybe Ron and Hermione had gotten the letter from Gringott’s, the one that gave Ron his invisibility cloak and his broom and the two of them together enough money to let them make a life in a comfortable home of their own. The letter explained that he needed to get away from everyone who knew his name and the scar on his face, that he needed to find somewhere new for himself. Maybe they understood that. And maybe, the voice said, they’d only wanted his money all along, right from that moment when Harry had bought out the train’s snack cart. And maybe, after all the infamy and chaos he had brought them, maybe they were happy he was finally leaving.

Maybe Severus… Maybe Snape would be better off without Harry dragging him down constantly. Maybe he was actually, finally, done with Harry’s bullshit.

He’d had to go somewhere, but he’d had no idea where he wanted to go. Elsewhere, that much was clear, but where? He’d gone to the airport, but the bustle and noise and security had overwhelmed him. Harry wasn’t sure he trusted airplanes anyway. How did something that big and metal fly without magic? As he’d fled the airport, Harry noticed a large billboard advertising a cruise ship leaving from Southampton, heading to Canada, and he had figured, why not? He still hadn’t seen the ocean and Canada was far enough away that no one at all would likely know the name Harry Potter.

The only room left on the ship when he signed up was something far too fancy, with a king size bed, a fully stocked mini bar, and more space than he had ever had to himself. On his first night, he’d sat on his room’s small balcony and watched the land disappear. There was a party happening on a deck above him – he could hear the music and the laughter – but he wasn’t ready for music and laughter. Not yet, anyway. Days later, after sampling most of his mini bar, he realised that there was more alcohol at those events, and alcohol, he decided, was really, really good at making everything outside of him more fun and everything inside his head very quiet.

It wasn't going to become a habit, but it was nice to laugh and forget for a while. No one here knew who he was or what he had done and gone through. As far as they knew, he was just a student with too much money, and that gave him a freedom to be as much of an idiot as he needed to be. He had no one to answer to, and if anyone gave him a long look for behaving like a lunatic, laughing and dancing and drinking long into the night, he didn’t have to care. 

And if anyone flirted with him, bought him a drink, slid their fingers under his shirt as he danced– if they didn’t need anything more from him than what he could give them in an evening – well, he was allowed, wasn’t he? Snape had walked away. He could do anything, anyone, he wanted.

He could do without the headaches the morning after, though, he thought. Maybe there was a wizard district in Montreal where he could find some Pepper Up. 

Harry took the gangway down and then glanced up and down the port. He could tell Montreal was a big enough city to get lost in it. He could go anywhere. Do anything. Be anyone. No one was going to pay attention. No one was going to care.

“Harry! Hey!”

He turned around to find several of the men he’d, well, that he’d met on the cruise waving at him. He sighed as they came toward him and he gripped at the strap on his backpack, ready to walk away the second any of them tried to stretch their acquaintanceship further than he could stand. Which was anything at all. He didn’t need anyone to think they knew him.

“Hey!” Billy caught up to him and offered him a wide, toothy grin. His bare dark skinned arms, revealed by his yellow and green tank top, were still covered by the glittery body spray he’d worn the night before. Harry had had to cast several strong cleansing spells to rid himself of it. “Are you sticking around town for a while or are you heading out somewhere?”

“Why?”

“We’re off to the Village, then we’re all going to crash at Jean-Michel’s place,” Billy gestured at another of the men, who had his long hair tucked under a grey knit cap. “He lives nearby.”

Jean-Michel saluted Harry with two fingers to his forehead. “You’re welcome to come along.”

“The Village?”

“The Gay Village, of course. A lot of the Pride stuff will still be up and if you thought the nights on the cruise were crazy, just wait until our dear Saint Catherine wakes up. She’ll throw more booze and cock at you than even your delicious British mouth can handle.”

Harry opened his mouth and then closed it with a snap. “Huh,” he said. “You’re not… None of you…” He shut his mouth again and shifted uncomfortably.

“What?” Billy grinned. “Trying to put a ring on it?”

“Won’t be on your finger, if so,” Jean-Michel added dryly and Billy laughed.

“You can come with or not, but if you want to keep the party going, that’s what we’re doing.”

Harry glanced back at the cruise ship. What he’d left behind, that wasn’t home anymore, and maybe it had never been his home. Maybe it had never really wanted him, never wanted Harry instead of The Boy Who Lived, a person instead of a weapon, anymore than the Dursleys had wanted a wizard instead of a normal boy. Privet Drive had never been home and Hogwarts had been a lie. Maybe _home_ was an overrated ideal, anyway.

“Sure,” he said and looked out at the city. “Let’s keep the party going.”


	3. Chapter 3

The washroom’s mirror was spiderwebbed with cracks and someone had painted each jagged line with gold paint, and it felt as though the multitude of broken Harrys that looked back at him were equally held together by his eyeliner and too-tight sleeveless shirt. Harry braced himself against the sink and stared into his own eyes as several men brushed past him, their laughter and happy conversation drowned out by the thudding bass of the club’s music, which reverberated through the dimly lit washroom.

The stall door directly behind him opened again and a tall, blond man with broad shoulders folded into a no-longer crisp white shirt emerged. He tucked his shirttails back into his snug jeans and sidled in against Harry to reach the sink to wash his hands, pressing the curve of his arse against Harry’s stomach and giving him a slow smile in the mirror.

“Back to dancing?” He asked with an arched eyebrow, but Harry shook his head wordlessly.

He shrugged and double checked his reflection in the mirror. “Maybe I’ll see you another night then, for another… dance.” His eyes flicked up and down Harry and he pulled away with another slow smile.

The music swelled to deafening levels as the door opened, and the blond brushed against a tall, dark skinned man wearing leather pants and a multitude of tattoos on his way out of the washroom and Harry watched them exchange appreciative looks as they slipped past one another through the doorway.

Harry waited for a count of ten before he followed out into the thrumming club. The multicoloured strobe lights swept through the darkness and Harry’s eyes quickly found Billy in the crowd clustered around the long, sleek bar. He wove his way through the bodies and Billy clapped his shoulder and gave him a small shake.

“Having fun?” Billy asked with a wink, but he didn’t wait for a response. He nodded his head at the man who stood at his left, who had a tall glass of beer dripping condensation down his arm. Harry glanced over at him and his heart sank as he recognized him.

“This is Alexandre. He’s renting the second bedroom in Jean-Michel’s place.”

Harry kept his eyes on Billy and asked, “What happened to Tony?”

“Dropped out and went back home. Guess McGill was too much for him.”

Harry nodded. Tony had been way too young and stupid to be away from any adult supervision. Harry had known that immediately, even though Tony had had two years on Harry’s real age. He’d been theoretically registered at McGill University for his undergraduate degree, but, as far as Harry knew, he hadn’t gone to a single class, had instead burned through his student loans by buying table service and stuffing twenties into G-strings. Harry was surprised he’d made it to November. It hadn’t been much of a prediction to know that he’d leave Jean-Michel in the lurch as far as paying the lease on his ridiculous two story condo, but Harry had held his tongue, not that anyone would have listened to him anyway – Tony had been straight but _curious,_ or, as Billy had explained, a unicorn and no one turned down a unicorn, apparently.

Harry, having actually met a real unicorn, could see the comparison. Tony hadn’t let anyone touch him either.

“I’m going to McGill too.”

Harry dragged his gaze toward Alexandre. He had a French-Canadian accent, and the same brown hair and matching eyes that Harry remembered from the week before, eyes that had been far too kind and knowing for the one accessibility washroom stall in the basement of that dive bar. He’d tried to kiss Harry before their encounter, and then tried to make conversation afterward, and Harry had just walked away, left the bar, walked away into an early November snowstorm, without even collecting his coat from the coat check. He had no interest in kind eyes.

“What are you taking?” Billy asked him, oblivious to Harry’s uncomfortable silence. “This is Harry, by the way.”

Alexandre smiled and held out his hand. It hung for a second too long before Harry reluctantly took it.

“Nice to meet you,” Alexandre said, as he gripped Harry’s hand firmly before he let Harry pull away, and then he answered Billy and said, “I’m nearly finished my Masters in Clinical Psychology.”

Billy whistled as he gave him a twice over leer. “You don’t look that ancient.”

“I was homeschooled.” He glanced at Harry and his eyes seemed to flick upward, as though he could see the scar hiding in Harry’s fringe. “I got my, ah, my equivalency when I was seventeen, so… that let me get a bit of a headstart on things.”

“Homeschooled?” Billy laughed. “Are you some religious nut or something?”

Alexandre laughed as well and took a sip of his beer. “My family’s a bit different, I suppose, but no, not religious.”

“The only other person I know who was homeschooled, their parents were hippies and  
into magic and dancing under the full moon and stuff like that.”

Alexandre smiled widely. “Sounds rather like my parents,” he said and glanced at Harry again, who felt as his face drained of colour and his throat closed up tightly, suddenly dry as though he had swallowed sand.

Billy, usually oblivious to all but himself, noticed and set his hand on Harry’s shoulder again.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Harry rasped and backed away a step. “Just remembered something. I… I have to go. Go home. I’ll… um… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” Billy started to say, but Harry turned around and bee-lined away from them, weaving through the crowd and bursting out into the chilly night, without his jacket once again.

He cast a quick, nonverbal warming spell on himself against the cold and trudged through the dirty, slushy snow covered sidewalks, heading for his own, far more sensible apartment. It wasn’t far from Billy’s place, and only about four blocks away from Jean-Michel’s, and still very much close by to the Village, but the last thing Harry wanted was a walk. He wanted to close a door between himself and the world and drink until it stopped talking.

He managed a block before Alexandre caught up to him and fell into an easy step beside him.

“People are looking for you, you know.”

“I don’t care.”

He nodded as he handed Harry his jacket. Harry grabbed it from him with a glare. Alexandre stuffed his hands into the pockets of his own downy coat.

“No, I figured as much.”

Harry rounded on him and jabbed his finger at his chest. “Don’t tell anyone! I don’t want to be found.”

Alexandre held up both hands. “I wouldn’t. I don’t have any connections over there anyway and no one here is going to be looking. We’re few and far between. We don’t even have our own school.”

“Then how do you know about me?”

“My thesis advisor is magical too, but almost none of us have magical jobs. She works in trauma psychology, particularly related to combat and hostage situations. She was following the war in the UK in copies of your newspaper, the Daily Prophet. She’s only worked with a few survivors of magical wars and she offered her help, but your Ministry never wrote back. If she knew you were here, she’d want to help.”

“I don’t need anyone.”

“I know.”

“I _don’t,”_ Harry snapped and spun away.

Alexandre raised a hand to stop Harry, who pulled back violently from the movement. Alexandre held up his hands in surrender again and then stuffed them deliberately back in his pockets. He hunched his shoulders and shuffled back a step, leaving streaks through snow on the sidewalk. There were a few flakes of snow in his hair.

“I believe you. But I thought you might like to have someone to talk to. I’m not going to turn you in. I can’t even afford my own place; I’m not going to be spending my money on international owls.” Alexandre shrugged and flushed a little as he turned his face away to gaze up the near empty street. “I didn’t know who you were before, by the way. I saw the scar afterward and… Anyway, I don’t know many other magicals. I thought,” he shrugged again and scuffed the toe of his boot through the slush. “I thought it would be nice to know someone else.” 

He looked back at Harry. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. If you want to talk, you know where I am. And if you want to talk to my prof…”

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Alexandre shuffled back another step.

“No, no. You don’t have to. But if you _want_ to. Just… think on it. Okay?”

He gave Harry a self-conscious smile and then offered him a small wave. “I’ll see you around.”

Harry stared after him as he trudged away through the snow, and then glanced around to find he was only a few steps away from his flat, which sat over a coffee shop. He looked back at Alexandre’s retreating back and then let himself into his stairwell’s doorway and made sure it latched behind him.

* * *

Snape brushed the sweat from his forehead and swallowed around the taste of bile in his throat. He looked up at the sun, which was directly overhead, and then back down at the green beans he was harvesting. 

Qingling had cast a greenhouse bubble charm over the crops, an invention of her own design that allowed them a much longer growing season than was naturally occuring in the mountains of northern Tibet, but the charm amplified the heat of the sun to levels which he found nauseating.

He wasn’t adjusting well to his new environment. It had been nearly three months and, while he had never left the UK before and the closest he had ever experienced to a change in climate was going from the Midlands to northern Scotland, he would have expected that he’d have adjusted to the altitude by now. He had spent the better part of his first three months nauseated by the sun, by the smells, by the food, by most anything. He had many a sleepless night as his new bed was firmer than he was used to and the smell of the gifted yak wool over-blanket was overwhelming. It was also far too warm and the texture of it irritated his skin. He had never been particularly sensitive to texture, but he had night sweats nearly every night and he woke in a sodden mess, which he then had to wash off with water that somehow felt entirely different to his sensitised skin. 

The food related nausea had finally started to wane over the last week, but he had still not adjusted to the altitude. He found himself short of breath more often than not, dizzy and prone to headaches. He managed to keep this to himself, as he didn’t want to appear ungrateful for the place they had made for him at the school. He was teaching again, not his ideal, but he had far fewer students and those he had were keen to learn, involved and dedicated. He was also brewing, although he found that he often could not stand for nearly as long as he could before and the smells of brewing were often extremely overwhelming.

In short, he was a mess. And it was becoming difficult to keep up the pretense that all was fine.

The greenhouse bubble cooked him. He reached up again to swipe the sweat from his brow and, as he did, the world around him tilted violently to the right. His knees buckled under him and he pitched forward into the trellises, knocking several over and bringing the green bean plants crashing down around him, before the world around him went blessedly dark.

He woke up in the infirmary. 

Snape pushed himself up to his forearms and was surprised to find that the movement didn’t send a wave of vertigo through him. He sat up further and glanced around himself, taking in the rows of vials on the table beside him. He picked up one and sniffed it. It was unlabeled but smelled decidedly salty. 

He was replacing the vial when the door to the infirmary room opened and Qingling appeared in the doorway.

“Finally awake then?” She came over to his bedside and pushed aside several vials to place a tall glass and a pitcher on the table. She crossed her arms over her chest and told him, “You’re an idiot.”

“No doubt,” he said and eyed the empty water glass. He was parched, he found. “What have I done to earn this evaluation?”

“I don’t know what they do where you’re from, but here, we look out for our own. If you’re unwell, you _tell someone,_ you great big spindly idiot. Did you think you could just ignore it until it went away? I have a surprise for you – that’s not how this works!”

“That’s precisely how it works. Granted, it’s taking me longer to adjust to the change in altitude and environment than I anticipated, but–”

“Idiot,” she said again and filled the tall glass before handing it to him. “Drink. All of it. When’s the last time you drank water? Or ate food? You have to take care of yourself! There’s more than just you to think of now, isn’t there?”

Snape accepted the glass and frowned at her. “I understand that it’s an inconvenience that I’m not adjusting more quickly, but I don’t see how it would greatly affect anyone else.”

“Of course, it’s going to affect us! This is not usual, now is it?” She said and gestured at his hips. 

He glanced down at himself in confusion.

“We need to keep an eye on you, especially if it’s not going well! You’ll need extra food, more iron, and if your blood pressure is going to dip like this, we’ll need to cut back on your work hours. You need to take breaks and drink more water. Get better sleep. I’ve never seen the like before, and I’ve been through this more times than I can count. I’ve had four of my own, you know, and helped with countless others. But never with a man! How did you even… I don’t understand you. Are you _trying_ to lose them?”

“Lose who?”

“Your babies, of course!” She glared at him and then snapped, “Drink your water!”

He sipped helplessly as he stared back at her. “My… what?”

Qingling jabbed her finger toward his abdomen and he flinched back from her and pulled the blankets further up his chest, as though the fabric might protect him from her clear break from sanity.

“You have two babies in there, somewhere, somehow. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You don’t have the parts for this to happen naturally. What spell you used, I have no idea, or why! But here we are and there they are and we can only go on from here. Drink your water! You’re dehydrated, you damned fool.”

Snape stared at her. She had lost her mind, of course. It did happen from time to time. Magic helped prolong a person’s life, but there were some for whom this gift came with the price of sanity. And Qingling had to be well into her second century by the looks of her. 

The door opened, then, to reveal Niàn Zhēn, who came into the small room with two small plush animals in his arms, the genus of which Snape could not immediately identify. They had white fur with green accents and seemed to be a bear or a horse or possibly some kind of cat. His friend bore a wide, pleased smile and, as he came closer to Snape’s bed, he reached out with a plush animal in each hand and wiggled them at Snape’s midsection.

“Hello in there, little ones! Coo coo!”

Snape brought up his knees as closely to his chest as he could manage and clutched the blankets tightly to himself.

“You should have told us you were carrying some little secrets, my friend,” Niàn Zhēn set the animals down beside Snape on the bed and then patted Snape’s arm. “How exciting! You must tell me, though, how you did it. Was this the potion you had mentioned some months ago? The one for your war effort? The development of a functional uterus and accompanying reproductive abilities, was this intentional or an unexpected side effect? Absolutely revolutionary. Why, there hasn’t been a successful male pregnancy since… was it Zdenko Bytia in 1447? It must have been. And that, as you well know, was quite the accidental sensation! This, if you’ve created a potion that can allow for male pregnancies _on purpose,_ well… I don’t think I need to say how revolutionary it will be. And to test it on yourself! I really am very impressed by your dedication to the craft.”

Snape sucked in a deep breath. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the two small potential cats that snuggled up against his side. Their small sewn eyes stared back at him.

“I have no idea what either of you are saying right now. I am certainly not pregnant, if that is what you are both inferring. I am feeling a little ill, yes, and the higher altitude is giving me some grief, certainly, but I should like to think that I would have some sense of it in myself if I were, somehow, pregnant, which I certainly am not!” He reached for the glass of water again and took an unsteady drink from it. “It's impossible. There is no way I could be pregnant. That potion was intended for _luck,_ not…”

Snape trailed off and stared down into the glass of water with growing horror.

The _Felix Conubium_ element he had used to create the potion – he truly was an idiot. It was originally meant to imbue a newly married pair luck on their wedding night. It was a very old potion, from when wizarding marriages had been nearly strictly financially or politically based, but, of course, it would have been meant to ensure an heir. What else would ensure a successful marriage at that time? He had simply imagined it would boost both the luck element of the _Felix Felicis_ and the magical joining element of the _Iunctu Praecantatio._ He should have given it more thought.

_Felix Felicis_ was unpredictable – if carefully crafted, it could sway nearly any situation to its cause. If one was drowning, it could grow an individual gills or potentially disapparate an entire ocean. A student of his had once illicitly taken the potion before a quiz and the child’s parchment had transformed into a portrait of Nicholas Flamel himself, which had then proceeded to coach the child through the potion, this while Snape had quite coincidentally stepped out of the room at that exact moment to receive a thoroughly distracting letter that informed him he was the recipient of the Potioneer of the Year award, which put him in such a good mood that he had actually granted the child house points for his moxie.

The _Felix Felicis_ would certainly have done anything to him to assist the _Felix Conubium_ ensure a fruitful joining – even… this.

Beneath the blankets, he pressed a hand to his lower belly and was dumbfounded to feel a slight distention where there previously was none. He yanked his hand back and swallowed around a thick nausea, which swept through him. 

“Ai, you’ve gone white as a ghost,” Qingling exclaimed and tapped the water glass in his other hand. “Drink!”

He dutifully took a mouthful of water and then another to wash down the taste of accumulating bile.

The night they had taken the potion together, he and Harry, in the armchair in his sitting room. The wave of lust and the animalistic drive that had fueled them to fuck like it might be their last, and it had been their last, as it turned out. And Snape had thought the bittersweet memories of their last coupling would be the worst he would be left with.

“I…” he began and swallowed heavily. He set down the glass shakily on the table. It clinked against the collection of vials. “No, I didn’t intend for… for this. It was… I meant it to be… Not this. Not at all this.” 

Niàn Zhēn reached out and squeezed Snape’s arm in a gentle grip. He gave him a kind smile and said, “There is no need to fret, my friend. We will all do everything we can to see you through this to a happy and successful end. You’re part of our family now, and your little ones, when they show their small faces, will be as well. We are here for you. You need never be alone again.”

* * *

Harry never took anyone home. He met them in bars or in clubs, sometimes during the day in coffee shops or out on the street, sometimes through one of his friends (particularly Billy, who never seemed to lack for cast-off companions), and occasionally in personal ads, if one caught his attention. He either found a spot, washroom stalls or the larger single-person washrooms some places had, or he let them take him home. Jean-Michel warned him that was a particular dangerous habit to adopt, but Harry knew no one could possibly do him more harm that what he’d already received.

The benefit of it was that he never had to kick anyone out who tried to overstay their welcome. He always had the option to leave whenever it suited him. Or he had. The worst he’d had to deal with before were people who got a bit too forceful with him or didn’t abide by his rules. He didn’t let anyone fuck him. He didn’t get on his knees for anyone. He definitely never let anyone tie him up or blindfold him. He was always clear about his rules and he’d always been happy to leave well before anything started if anyone protested. 

This guy, and Harry wished he could remember his name, had agreed to the rules. They’d had a few drinks at the club and then a few more when they’d gotten to the guy’s flat and smoked some weed, nothing excessive or out of the ordinary, but Harry woke up to a dark room with a throbbing head and shackles around his wrists and ankles.

He tugged at the restraints on his wrists and his shoulders ached at the movement. How long had he been there? It had already been well into the night when they’d returned from the club, after 1 am, but the moon – it had still been in the sky, he had seen it. Harry looked up at the ceiling and around himself as far as he could lift his head, but there were thick curtains drawn over the windows, blocking out the sky. A light flickered across the ceiling, a candle, and he lifted his head as far as he could to look at it. It was a fat candle with three wicks, the type that were sold in home decor shops and put on coffee tables and never lit, and it smelled faintly of vanilla and pine. 

To the left of the candle, on a tall tripod, was a boxy video camera, aimed directly at the bed. It was dark, no lights flashing to indicate it might be filming, although Harry knew next to nothing about cameras, nothing at all. Had the man already filmed them? Was he still filming?

He had a sudden sharp memory of the sight of himself in Voldemort’s mind – naked and chained on that black and white marble floor, twisted and bleeding as the Death Eaters had their way with him – and he yanked violently at the restraints again.

His breath caught in his throat, which was extremely dry, as though he had swallowed sawdust, and his mouth tasted of rotting fruit. The air smelled of marijuana, the candle, and semen. He shivered in the chilly air, naked and uncovered on the bed, and goosebumps rose all along his skin as he wrenched at the restraints. 

He had no wand. He was an idiot. An idiot.

A sound in the hallway outside the bedroom made him freeze and he listened as a door opened and closed and footsteps moved in the distance, away from the room.

Harry sucked in a deep, rattling breath and looked up at the restraints. They were black leather with metal buckles and chains that hooked around the bed frame. 

This he could do, he assured himself breathlessly, and he clenched his eyes closed. His pulse thudded in his neck as he cast out his magic toward the cuffs. He felt the edges of them. They weren’t magical; they were leather and metal and ordinary, well-made, but he could feel how the metal joined the leather: six small grommets that held the buckle in place. Sweat dripped down his forehead and into his hair as he pushed at the grommets with his magic until finally, they loosened and, with a strong pull, he ripped his right hand from the cuff. 

He scrabbled at his other wrist, his fingers numb and clumsy, but he was able to free his left hand and then he quickly freed his ankles as well. He swayed to his feet and knocked over the camera’s tripod, which clattered to the floor loudly.

Harry winced and cast his eyes around the room frantically for his clothing and for his wand, but they had been taken from the room, hopefully not thrown out. Footsteps came down the hallway and the door swung open.

“How…” The man looked over at the bed, at the cuffs lying abandoned on the mattress. He was attractive – very tall, with broad shoulders and thick arms – but otherwise looked very unassuming. His eyes glittered and his mouth stretched into a sharp smile. “You want to play like that, then?”

Something went cold and hard like iron inside Harry and before he had the time to organize his thoughts, he had pushed the man against the wall, putting the full force of his magic behind his hands. He was still short and slight, nothing physically compared to this man, but he held him firmly against the wall with his magic and the man’s eyes widened until Harry could clearly see the whites of them. 

The man’s thoughts swirled through his mind in panic and it took nothing at all for Harry to dig through them and see just how poorly Harry had chosen for his night’s company. His thoughts were sharp and the sickly black and blue of deep bruises. Drugs that made a person forget, knives and fists and worse, video sold to the highest bidder – some had been young, far too young – some hadn’t survived the process. Harry could see the whole disgusting network that this man supplied and he could not let it continue.

_“Imperio.”_

The man slumped back and his face softened with a look of pure bliss and adoration.

"You,” Harry commanded, his mind icy cold and focused, “are going to turn yourself in to the police. You are going to confess everything you’ve ever done to anyone you’ve ever hurt. You are going to reveal everyone else involved in hurting people and distributing the videos. You are going to plead guilty. You will never hurt anyone ever again. You will destroy the tape you just made of me. You will remember all of my orders, but you will forget you ever met me as soon as I leave.”

The man, who had nodded along with every order Harry had listed, nodded eagerly one last time. He pulled his cellphone out from his back pocket and, before he could begin to phone the police, Harry exhaled shakily and said, “And you will show me where my clothes and things are.”

Not ten minutes later, Harry stepped out onto the street and closed the building’s door behind him. 

He was freezing, even more than the chilly night warranted – his teeth clattered together and he wrapped his arms around himself tightly as his breath fogged out in rapid clouds. 

“Fuck,” he said and then, as his breath still lingered in the air, he said it again. _“Fuck.”_

“Harry?”

His heart leapt in his chest as he turned to find Alexandre coming up the road toward him. He was bundled up in a down parka and a blue knitted scarf wrapped several times around him, and even though Harry had done his best to avoid him ever since the night at the club, Harry felt a surge of relief at the sight of him.

“You okay?” Alexandre glanced up at the building Harry had just exited and then cocked his head as the sound of sirens pierced the air.

“We need to go,” Harry felt lightheaded and breathless. “We need to go.”

Alexandre shot a sharp look at Harry and then back at the building.

“What happened?”

Harry grabbed his sleeve in a fisted hand and tugged, and Alexandre, thankfully, allowed himself to be led down the street and around a corner. Harry leaned heavily against the brick wall and tried to steady his breathing.

“Harry, what happened?”

“He, uh,” Harry sucked in another breath. “The man in there, he… wasn’t a good person.”

“Yeah,” Alexandre pushed at Harry’s sleeve, exposing the red marks the cuffs had left on his wrists. “I get that. But what happened?”

“I used _Imperio.”_

“On the bad man.”

Harry nodded and kept nodding. He couldn’t seem to make himself stop. His heart thudded so violently in his chest, he was surprised it wasn’t visible. The world around him felt as though it were in slow motion compared to the sickening churn of thoughts and the rapid beating of his heart. A maelstrom of memories churned in his mind. His rattling breaths fogged around him and hung suspended in the still, freezing winter air.

“He was – he was going to hurt me. He maybe already hurt me?” Harry heard his voice go high and sharp and he swallowed and leaned his head back against the brick wall, feeling it prick at his scalp. His other hand crept up to his neck and circled around. His fingers shook. “He hurt others. He –”

“Harry,” Alexandre interrupted. “Is it okay if I touch you?”

Harry startled and looked up at him wordlessly.

He held out his hand and motioned toward Harry’s shoulder. “Can I touch you?”

“I… yes.”

Alexandre rested his hand lightly against Harry’s shoulder and gripped. He felt warm and Harry found himself leaning into the touch.

“The police are here for him? You told him to turn himself in?”

Harry nodded. 

“Good. You’re right, we should go. Do you feel comfortable coming back to my place? Jean-Michel is out of town. I made soup the other day, if you want some.”

Harry stared at him for a long moment and Alexandre held the gaze as Harry searched his face. There was no judgement on his face, no cloying sympathy, only a calmness, as though he truly had no stake in whether Harry said yes or no to his offer. As though, if Harry said no, he would just shrug and let him go. Part of Harry wanted to be offended by this, didn’t he _care,_ but the rest of him was relieved and comforted by it. If it didn’t matter one way or the other, then why not accept the help?

He nodded and a wide smile grew across Alexandre’s face.

“Great. This way.”

Alexandre led him the three blocks to the renovated warehouse that housed Jean-Michel’s fancy condo, which was on the sixth floor of the building and had tall windows and an ‘industrial’ feel. The large kitchen island was a solid slab of concrete sitting on metal under counters and the support beams for the wide, open room were exposed pipes. The pipes were clearly new but were painted to look rusted. Harry had immediately hated the apartment when he had first seen it months before and nothing had improved in the interim. It made him miss Hogwarts, and he’d rather it didn’t.

Alexandre pulled out a large pot from the refrigerator and ladelled out two bowls, and then, with his fingers against the sides of the bowls, he whispered an incantation and the soup within began to steam. He pushed it over to Harry and handed him a spoon.

“Here, eat up.”

While he wouldn’t have said he’d had any appetite before the soup was placed in front of him, once it was, Harry found his mouth watering and his stomach growling impatiently. It was a thick potato soup with large chunks of bacon and a comforting scent wafting up in curls of steam, and, once he’d dug in, it settled into Harry’s stomach with a weight and warmth that was nothing short of magical.

He peered into the soup. “Is this charmed?”

Alexandre laughed, “No, it’s just soup.” He settled himself onto one of the bar stools and slid his own bowl toward himself. “Old family recipe, but no magic involved – except a lot of butter and some really good cuts of bacon.”

Harry glanced at the other bar stool and hesitated for a moment before he sat down, but he couldn’t help but keep eating. “You do wandless magic?”

“Hmm? Oh yes. Warming up the soup? It’s not that big a deal.”

“Wandless magic is… it’s not very common where I’m from.”

Alexandre gave a small, self-deprecating smile and waved his his spoon in a small circle, sending a wave of sparks through the air. “We don’t have a wand-maker anywhere on this side of the country anymore. Not for a long time – not since my grandparents’ time, I don’t think. It’s too expensive to order one from Vancouver and even more to order one from the States. We learn to make do.”

“No one has one?”

“My thesis advisor has one, but she mostly uses it as a hairstick.” He ate another mouthful of soup and asked, “So, is casting _Imperio_ as big a deal on your side of the world as it is here?”

Harry swallowed thickly and set down his spoon with a careful and deliberate movement. He pushed it gently until it sat at a 90 degree angle from the edge of the counter and nodded, his head bowed.

“We call it one of the Unforgivables.”

“We do too. I imagine, then, that you had a damned good reason to use it. You don’t strike me as the type to go around casting Unforgivables for fun.”

“I… ah, no. First time, actually.” Harry scratched his thumbnail against the countertop, eyes down and he sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I woke up chained to the bed, naked, with a camera filming me and… I got myself out of that, but the guy, he came in and – I’m pretty good with Legilimency and what I saw in his head, in his memories… it wasn’t good.”

“I bet not.”

“He did it to other people. To kids. Some people died. Accidentally, I think, but… it’s not that much of an accident with everything else they were doing to them. And I just, I couldn’t let him get away with it. I couldn’t let him keep doing it. And he wasn’t the only one – there was a whole network of people. Hurting people. Over and over. Not again. I couldn’t let him keep hurting people.”

“Not again?”

On the exposed pipe close to Harry’s side, there was a swirl of rust coloured paint that looked like the Whomping Willow. He stared at it, half expecting it to move like a wizarding portrait, but it held still. He felt like everything around him was holding still, breathless, waiting, while everything in his head was fluttering and crashing about like a bird trapped between window panes. The memories of it all pressed against the sides of his skull, behind his eyes, in his throat, trying to break free.

He’d been pushing it down since it happened. He’d told Severus – well, he’d told him some of it, not all, just enough to make sure Severus didn’t ask for more, didn’t think he was holding anything back. 

Of course, the worst of it, the very worst of it, Severus had figured out on his own. And it had been exactly what had made Severus walk away from him. After all, who wants someone who can’t love you back because they love someone else, someone as horrible, as monstrous, as dangerous as Voldemort? Worse than the man Harry had just left behind for the police to find. Thousands of times worse. The fact that those feelings still clung tightly in his chest, like leeches, was revolting to him – revolting, but unshakeable. They twisted him from the inside out until he was revolting through and through, like a discarded rag on the side of the road.

He sighed and rubbed at his forehead, his fingers tracing over his scar. He felt an echo of Voldemort’s mind sparking against his fingertips, like the phantom pain of a lost limb, but Harry knew he wasn’t there anymore. Voldemort wasn’t, but everything that had happened, the whole ugly story of it all, it was still there – trapped. It slid over his tongue and pressed against his teeth, vying for freedom, twisting him to pieces.

“They didn’t report it in the Daily Prophet? You didn’t read it?”

“Report what?”

“What happened to me. Over the summer. With the Death Eaters. With… with Voldemort.”

Alexandre was silent for a heartbeat, his face still calm and expressionless, before he recited, “You were captured and held prisoner by them. You escaped on your own. The article didn’t go into details, except about how powerful you are and how prepared you were to fight afterward and how little Albus Dumbledore did to look for you while you were captured.”

A bitter laugh burst from Harry and he shook his head. “That’s… unexpectedly respectful of them.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Harry laughed again and it sounded hollow even to his own ears. All the words he had told no one, no one except Severus, strained inside of him. He looked up at Alexandre. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” Alexandre replied with a shrug. 

Harry sucked in another deep breath and let it out and, with it, he let the words loose too.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with this new chapter! 
> 
> I think I'm going to aim for a new chapter at the end of each month. I know that's not ideal, but I feel like even that will test me, so let's see how it goes. (Remember when I thought I'd post something every week? Oh, you sweet summer child.)

Harry’s mobile buzzed in his pocket and he put down his book to answer it.

It was Billy.

“Hey there. Club Unity tonight? Got a friend who wants to meet you. If you know what I mean.”

Harry suppressed a sigh. Billy had yet to figure out that Harry wasn’t playing that same game anymore.

“Sorry Billy… not tonight. I’ll see you Friday though.”

Billy blew a raspberry at him through the phone and said, “You’re so boring now,” before hanging up.

Harry rolled his eyes and flipped the phone closed. As far as Billy was concerned, he probably was boring now. He hardly went out these days. He certainly didn’t pick up anyone in bars anymore, didn’t pop over to Billy’s place to smoke and drink and fuck. It had been a slow transition since the night where Alexandre saved him with soup and a kind ear, but waking up in that awful man’s bed, in that position, had proven to him that living that way had been a very dangerous idea. It had been killing him, nearly literally, and, as it turned out, he actually wanted to be alive.

Back in the Boundaries after he had killed Voldemort, he had chosen the door that had brought him back to life, but – if he was going to be honest with himself, which he rarely was – he’d regretted it ever since. At best, he’d been letting his time run out and, at worse, he’d been putting himself into dangerous situations on purpose. Waking up naked and chained, again, had been terrifying. He was appalled at himself for letting himself end up in that position again, and, after some very long, late-night talks with Alexandre, it was a bit of a mindfuck to come to the realisation that he’d been _trying_ to make that happen. That he thought it was what he deserved. That he didn’t deserve anything better.

Harry glanced down at the cover of his book and smoothed his hand over the title. It was a book on PTSD recovery, penned by Dr. Christine Martel, whose name was also on the door facing him across the hall from the waiting room. Alexandre had spent the better part of a month gently pushing him toward a therapy session with his thesis advisor and, eventually, Harry had given in.

“Why can’t you do it yourself?” Harry had all but whinged at him. “I trust you and you already know the whole story. I don’t want to have to say it all over again to someone new, a stranger.”

Alexandre had shook his head firmly though and said, “I really can’t. I’m not licensed and I’d never _get_ my license if anyone found out. Plus, we’re friends. That’s a big no-no. But I can go with you to see Christine, if that helps at all. I can sit in the waiting room or I can even come in with you, but you’ll be okay. Christine isn’t scary. She’s tiny. She can barely reach the upper cupboards in her kitchen without a step stool. _You’re_ taller than she is.” 

That first meeting with Christine had… not gone well.

She was just as Alexandre had described her – barely 5 foot and boyishly slim, with dark brown hair streaked liberally with silver and cat-eyed glasses resting on her freckled nose – she looked like a child who had dressed as a middle-aged scholar for Halloween. Her accent was not as pronounced as Alexandre’s, but still notable on certain words and in certain turns of phrase, but she seemed more classically French than Alexandre did. To Harry, who had never been anywhere before and had only been allowed to watch movies or television a handful of times growing up, she seemed as if she had stepped out of an advertisement for Paris, with her scarves and skinny black jeans and the smell of black coffee and the hint of cigarette smoke that permeated her office, as she flouted the campus’s no-smoking rules by puffing out her open window. She also looked a bit severe, rather like McGonagall, Harry thought, with a pinched look to her mouth and no laugh-lines about her eyes. Harry assumed that since she looked like a twelve year old, she likely had to assume a more serious demeanor to be taken seriously.

Alexandre had waited for him in the waiting room, and Harry had gone into her office alone, his stomach twisting in upon itself, his hand clutching at the over-large cup of coffee he had brought with him for company. She had stood up and shaken his hand, gesturing for him to sit on her small leather sofa as she took the opposing chair. She had a notepad and a pen at the ready and their first fifteen minutes were spent going over the rules of the session, which helped to calm him down a little. It was nice to hear how focused she was on confidentiality. The last thing he wanted was for her, or anyone, to take his story to the Prophet, especially since he knew she subscribed to the newspaper. 

But then, she asked him to tell her his story and he honestly hadn’t known where to start.

Should he start with the summer with Voldemort? That was actively the problem, wasn’t it? Or should he go back to what had prompted him to put himself in that position, his need to train seriously that year, which had been itself because he had fucked up so badly the year before that people had died because of him. Because he had been so ill-prepared, so completely unready to face anything more serious than a boggart, that his only remaining family, his godfather, had died.

(That Sirius was alive again, this somehow didn’t matter to the voice in his head that told him all of it was his fault.)

Or should he go back further? Should he start with his parents? With the Dursleys? Or with the cupboard under the stairs?

With a bit of a self-deprecating smile, he had asked her how much time they had, and she had replied, expressionless, that she had cleared her schedule and he had the entire afternoon, if he needed it.

With that and with a heavy sigh, Harry had started at the beginning.

Christine had sat listening, mostly quietly although she did interject from time to time to ask a clarifying question, but for the first two hours, she had just taken careful notes and listened, watching him closely as though paying as much attention to his body language as to his words.

He had told her about growing up with the Dursleys and about his first memory (he’d been about three; his aunt had yelled at him to come down from cleaning the upstairs washroom, which he was taking too long to do, to come clean the breakfast dishes; unsteady on his feet, he had fallen down the stairs and knocked down several photos from the wall; Petunia had screamed at him and shoved him into the cupboard; he had wrapped one of Dudley’s socks around his palm to staunch the blood. Days later, he’d had his dinner ripped from his hands and thrown in the garbage after Petunia had found the ruined sock). 

He told her about his parents, what the Dursleys had told him had happened, what had truly happened. How much he had idolized his father and longed for his mother and what it had been like to find out his father’s true nature and to have never been told anything about his mother.

He told her about Dumbledore. He told her about how much he had idolized the old man as well.

Finally, feeling numb from everything he had already said, he told her about Voldemort and the Death Eaters. He told her about his summer. He told her what they had done to him. He told her how Voldemort had conditioned him. He told her about the fruit. He told her about the sounds of the birds and the cool floor against his heated skin. He told her everything. 

It was only after all of this that finally she reacted to anything.

After he told her about his relationship with Severus.

She had leaned forward in her chair and the leather creaked loudly with the sudden movement, and she had asked in her delicately accented voice, “He was your professor? He was _actively_ your professor?”

“Yes?”

“And he’s twenty years your senior?”

Harry had narrowed his eyes and corrected, “Nineteen years.”

“I see,” she had said in a slow voice, one thin eyebrow raised as she had written something down in her notebook.

His vision had narrowed down to the sight of her pen against paper and he remembered everything going red as his entire body was filled with a sudden and deep, pulsating rage.

Who did she think she was? Who did she think she was to judge the one and only good thing that had come out of everything that had happened to him? After everything he had told her, after everything that had happened to him, how could this be what she found fault with? Severus had done his best to support him, had been there, had listened, had cared, had put up with so much from Harry, had done so much that was antithetical to his character, as if loving and protecting Harry had been more important than maintaining his own carefully constructed defences, and if it had been more important than protecting his own heart. How dare she judge this? How could she know, when she hadn’t been there?

Christine had gotten to her feet in the middle of Harry’s loud and angry tirade to fetch Alexandre to help calm him down. She’d then left the room, telling them she would go and get them some water, leaving Harry to Alexandre’s tending, and Harry’s anger had almost immediately burst from rage into tears. He hadn’t truly cried in far too long, maybe not since he’d found himself safe in Severus’s bed after the longest summer of his life. 

He had left. He had had someone who loved him, who cared for him, who was so unendingly patient with him and he had thrown that away. 

Because he was an idiot. And broken. He was a broken idiot.

Until that moment, he hadn’t realised, or maybe hadn’t let himself realise, how much he missed Severus. It suddenly felt like a deep pulsating ache in his heart, like he’d been slowly bleeding to death internally the entire time and it was now finally close to fatal. It felt as if he actually had something physically missing inside his chest. Something important. Something vital.

He missed Severus’s calmness – which is not something he would ever have imagined possible – but it had centered him, right from the beginning of the year. Harry had been a mess the summer before last, with the knowledge that he was the reason Sirius was gone, dead, and the time he had been allowed in Severus’s office had been invaluable. Before their friendship had turned into more, and even before they’d settled into their tentative truce, Severus’s calmness had saved him.

Harry missed that calmness, just as he missed Severus’s eyes, his little, tentative smiles, his hands, his strength, his thoughtfulness, his sitting room, his books, his bed. The warmth of his arms. The depth of his kisses. The sound of his heart.

And he’d thrown it all away. 

For Voldemort – someone who could not and would never deserve anything resembling Harry’s love.

After she had returned with a pitcher of water and several glasses and after he had managed to calm himself somewhat, with Alexandre still by his side, he had haltingly told her about Severus.

Afterward, and while it was clear she still didn’t approve, Christine had urged him to write to Severus.

He’d scoffed at that, tears streaking his face and spotting the lenses of his glasses, because how could he? He knew he should, he’d known it for months now – that he should write to Severus and let him know where he was, that he was safe, just as he should write to Ron and Hermione, but how could he? None of them wanted to hear from him. None of them could even possibly want anything more to do with him after everything he had done. After he had left as he had.

And, at that, Christine had wordlessly reached into her filing cabinet and passed him back copies of the Daily Prophet and she had pointed out the full page advert in it, taken out by Ron and Hermione, begging him to contact them, to just let them know he was okay.

It had been printed in every single edition, stretching back to the week he had left.

After that, it had taken him two days to figure out that an international owl would take far too long to get to them, and so, with Alexandre sitting just out of view and with Christine’s help in organizing it, he had sat down to contact them by a rare international floo call. It hadn’t been easy to organize and apparently took Christine making use of some of her magical contacts in the Canadian government, as only a small handful of Canadian floos were connected to the UK and heavily regulated due to security concerns, but Christine had immediately organized it for him even with his recent behaviour.

The call had to be organized on the UK side too, it was all something typically used for magical government communication, and when Ron and Hermione had answered his call, he could tell the call was likely going to be monitored. But it didn’t matter to him at all. 

Their faces were pale, their eyes red and bloodshot, their expressions desperately hopeful, and Hermione had immediately sobbed when she caught sight of him, a sharp sound right from her gut. Ron was perhaps even taller than he had been, but his cheeks were hollow and he had dark, deep circles under his eyes. Ron had bit down on his lip so hard at the sight of his friend that Harry could see that he had split it.

They didn’t have long. Fifteen minutes was all Christine had been able to get for him. It was simultaneously the worst and best fifteen minutes of his life.

They were coming to visit soon. Ron had forgone his 7th year to start auror training early while Hermione was finishing her schooling while simultaneously working with the Ministry of Mysteries in some capacity she couldn’t explain, but they had said they would come as soon as they could. Harry had told them he would pay for their portkeys, but they had told him that, except for the advert, they hadn’t spent any of the money he had left them, so they could use that.

He didn’t deserve them, he had told them, and Ron, his lower lip visibly bleeding and trembling slightly, had told Harry that he couldn’t possibly be more of an idiot if he tried.

That had been all they had had time to say before the call had been cut off. Afterward, Harry had sat staring at the now empty fireplace, frozen in place, and it was only after Alexandre had wrapped his own giant coat around Harry’s shoulders that he realised he was truly freezing, shaking and trembling like a terrified rabbit. His teeth chattered and his shoulders hunched up near to his ears and it had taken several minutes before he could hear Alexandre speaking to him soothingly over the sound of his teeth and his throbbing heartbeat.

They were scheduled to arrive late Friday afternoon. 

He still hadn’t written to Severus. He’d tried, over and over, to write something, to put the words down on paper, but he had no idea what those words should be. How did you apologize for leaving as he’d done, or for all the things he’d said and the way he’d acted? How did you make amends? Was there any way to start over?

Harry had no idea how to express in words that yes, he did love Severus back, that yes, he did want to spend the rest of his life there by Severus’s side, that yes, Harry certainly was an idiot of the highest degree, but hopefully Severus didn’t mind that overmuch? He didn’t know how to ask how to make amends for everything he had done.

It wasn’t a thing to say on paper and he doubted very much that another international floo call could be organized. Nor was he sure that Severus would welcome a call from him. He was still a mess. He might always be a mess. Severus didn’t deserve that. 

Christine told him he shouldn’t make those decisions on Severus’s behalf, but it seemed a foregone conclusion to Harry. Severus had been through enough without more of Harry’s disaster added to it all.

Not that he wasn’t going to ask Ron and Hermione to update him on how Severus was doing, of course, when they arrived. If they wanted to. He shouldn’t push it. Maybe he’d give it a few days, not ask right away.

Christine’s door opened, interrupting Harry’s thoughts, and she nodded to him, the same serious expression on her youthful face.

He smiled back at her, gathered up his things and followed her into her office, and then closed the door behind him.

* * *

The owl, when it reached Snape through his open window, was exhausted and underweight. Its feathers were dirty and askew and it lay rather limply against the frame of his bed, breathing heavily through its open beak. It was an international owl, meant for long distances, but clearly this particular trip had been outside its usual capabilities.

Gingerly, Snape took the letter from its leg and then levered himself upward to cross his small bedroom to summon for Li-Xiao, one of the elder students, who acted as Qingling’s assistant. The girl kept their own owls and had successfully rehabilitated several injured birds, even in the short few months of his own residency. She would know what to do for the creature, something well beyond his own knowledge – unless it needed a Pepper Up, which was extremely unlikely.

After Li-Xiao had come, crooned over the poor owl, gathered it up and left, Snape turned his attention back to the missive. It was bound in a thin waxed leather sleeve – clearly the sender had anticipated it would travel through various climes – and it was addressed quite simply: _Severus Snape, Parts Unknown._

He recognized the hand, however. He had been been deciphering this particular chicken scratch for the better part of 30 years, although Minerva McGonagall would have claimed that her style of handwritten was the _correct_ way to write and that it was everyone else who had it wrong. 

Snape let out a long breath and leaned back against his short wooden chest of drawers, settling himself down on it. It creaked under his weight and he set a hand under his belly, which had, over the last month, grown so noticeably larger that he was finally glad for the loose fit of the Tibetan clothing his new home had gifted him. 

It had been a fairly innocuous bump for months, growing larger but nothing that required him to accommodate it in any significant way, but at the crest of his sixth month at the Zhēnxiàng school, the twins had decided to make themselves known to all who had eyes. He had always been a private person and the last thing he might have wanted was for the greater population to know anything about him, much less about his body, but there was no hiding it now, and, as it turned out, those at the school were all accepting and accommodating. They were curious, of course, particularly the students, but they all wanted to help – which was lucky as he found he needed their help for nearly everything. 

Qingling, who had acted as a midwife for decades and who had delivered, by her own admission, close to a hundred infants, was keeping a close eye on him. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant pregnancy – in fact, it was possibly the worst thing his body had ever endured and that was certainly a claim. Qingling insisted that, so far, nearly everything that could go wrong had. His body didn’t like being pregnant, which wasn’t any surprise to him. It wasn’t designed for this. But the foetuses were tenacious and the magic that had led to their conception was likely lending its good luck toward keeping them going. His body certainly wasn’t doing anything to help them along.

Snape found himself having to rely on those around him, maybe for the first time in his life. And so far, they hadn’t abused that reliance. No one seemed to bear any ill-will toward him. Everyone from his fellow instructors to the students, to the few outsiders (parents or tradespeople) who visited regularly, they all wanted to support him in any way they could. It was a unique experience. 

They were all excited on his behalf, a thing that he, himself, hadn’t echoed until very recently. He felt betrayed by his own body, by his magic, and worse, by his innovation. It felt like an extremely public and visible evidence of his failure to properly calculate the likely interactions in his potioneering – this was not what he intended but now that it was here, it seemed all too clear that this, this misappropriation of his body, might be an outcome that he had failed to foresee. He had failed to prevent it. It didn’t feel like anything worth celebrating.

But then they moved.

In truth, they had likely been moving for several weeks, but he had not known what to expect and so had not noticed that what he had interpreted as digestive issues was instead movement of a more living sort. But they were insistent, clearly thinking him thick, and he finally clued in to their efforts to make themselves known. 

One of them, the one who seemed to take up residence on his right side, was particularly active. It kicked him routinely, almost as though it were trying to break free. The other was less aggressive in its movements. It felt more like a twist of movement, as if it was constantly bored by its view and turning over to see more, not that he expected there was much to see regardless. 

It was this, this beginning of personality, that brought the whole thing home to him in a way that his growing body hadn’t. It had been parasitic before, but Snape understood now that he was in the process of producing people. Two people who would be born into this world (how, he still wasn’t sure), who would grow and develop distinct personalities and tastes and dreams, who would become adults and live their own lives and make their own contributions. They would initially be completely dependant on him. It would be his responsibility to ensure they grew up happy, healthy and, hopefully, unmarred by trauma. He had the chance to do better than his own parents had. He had the chance to raise a Snape who could be _happy._

It was daunting and he had no idea how to go about it, but he had his suspicions that those same people who wanted to support him through this pregnancy would still be there when they were infants. As the old saying went, perhaps it did take a village.

Snape turned his attention back to the letter and, with an impending sense of dread, he unfurled it. He scanned his eyes down the missive and then breathed a sigh of relief, so deep that it apparently awoke the more watchful of his twins, who bumped him as it turned over in its inquisitiveness. He rubbed at his left side as he tried to calm the creature back to sleep.

The letter had no urging to return and none of Albus’s pointed inquiries or passive-aggressive statements of his value, but, instead, Minerva sent him a sincere inquiry into his safety and health and, in her standard no-nonsense fashion, assured him that he would always have a place at Hogwarts should he wish to return, but that she hoped he would not be a stranger no matter where he was or where he would be.

It was dated only a few weeks after he had left, and he glanced off through his open window, thinking after the owl who had searched for him for nearly six months. No wonder it had looked so bedraggled.

He should have sent her something, but it had honestly never occurred to him that anyone might miss him or have concern over his well being. Which was a sad realisation, he decided, even as, in that moment, he caught sight of Qingling come around the side of one of the buildings and wave in his direction, signaling that she was coming his way. He set the letter down on his small bureau and put his capped bottle of ink on it to hold it in place against the usual evening winds that swept through their little valley.

Qingling was accompanied by a woman who looked even more wizened and diminutive than she, if such a thing was possible. They took the path slowly as the tiny and positively ancient woman walked down the sloping stone stairs with an unsteady hand on her walking stick. Her face was so wrinkled from a lifetime of sunlight and hard work that Snape could almost not see her eyes at all. She looked like a raisin that had been left out in the sun for far, far too long, and she was clearly struggling with the stone path, and so Snape didn’t hesitate to come out to meet them halfway.

Qingling waved him off though. “I’m not having my mother stand out here in the middle of the path, you great giant pastry, but I think we will sit outside. The sun is nice at this time of day, I think. Bring some chairs out, will you?”

Snape rolled his eyes and turned his bulk back toward his small cottage, and he dragged his two chairs out from his room while muttering under his breath and then he transfigured a third from the chamberpot he’d been compelled to use over the past month, as using it had, unfortunately, become a better option than waddling down the path to the lavatories in the middle of the night.

Qingling could use the chamberpot chair, he decided and smirked as he levered himself down onto one of the other chairs.

“I saw that,” she said, but sat down in the chair anyway after she had settled her mother down in the better of the two remaining chairs.

“I did nothing to hide it,” he replied and then nodded at Qingling’s mother. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all yours,” the tiny woman replied in a voice that sounded like two rough stones being scraped against one another. “I’m far too old to find pleasure in much these days.”

Snape blinked at her and then, after a pause, said, “Except, perhaps, in the superiority of knowing you are the most experienced and knowledgeable person in any situation and can therefore exude as much disdain as you please.”

The old woman laughed, deepening the already pronounced creases in her face, and she tapped her walking stick against the stones beneath them. “True enough.”

“My mother has offered to share her gift with you.”

“Oh? What gift might that be, Mrs. Li?”

The two women laughed at that and the older of the two shook her head. “Li was my husband’s name, and he’s been gone for longer than you’ve been alive, child. You may call me Qingzhao, if you must call me something. Most call me Grandmother these days, although I’d really rather they did nothing of the sort. I haven’t the energy to be everyone’s grandmother.”

“Qingzhao, very well. You may call me Severus,” Snape inclined his head and then winced at a particular violent kick to his right lower abdomen. 

“That one’s a fighter, and likely just for the sake of fighting. I think she’ll take her time to find a cause, mark me.”

“She?”

Qingzhao nodded. “Oh yes. They both are. Mostly.”

“Mostly? You know this, how?”

“That is why I’ve brought you my mother, string bean. She’s a seer.”

The old woman laughed again. “I could never See much and I certainly can’t see much of anything anymore, not with these eyes. But it’s true, this is what I do, what I have always done. I can see the path a child might take. I can’t see much once they’re about five or six – the paths get muddy then – but when they are young, or even better, when they are not yet born, I can see quite clearly. And that is why I am here, young man, if it is a gift you would care to accept.”

Snape was silent for a moment and he rubbed at his belly thoughtfully. Had he been back in the UK, it’s likely he would have been under a dreadful amount of scrutiny, being that he was male and such things were nearly unheard of, and he was over that certain age when pregnancies could be done with reasonably few complications. He would have been a novelty. An oddity.

Queer Death Eater impregnated by the Savior of the Wizarding World. 

Perfect.

Either way, it’s possible he would have been approached by Seers there as well, although true Seers were few and far between anymore and it was falling out of fashion to have your offspring’s life path charted before they had the chance to draw their first breath much less make their first decision. He would have disdained them, to be sure. If one’s only experience of Seers was Sybill Trelawney, it was understandable why one would avoid them forever after.

He felt a strong kick to his left side and smiled despite himself. They were opinionated brats, to be sure.

“Very well. This goes entirely against my better judgement, but clearly, my better judgement had nothing to do with how I find myself now, so… might as well have at it.”

Qingzhao grinned widely and shoved her walking stick in the direction of her daughter, who rolled her eyes as she took it. Once her hands were free, she motioned for Snape to come closer, which he did, sliding his chair closer until she was able to take his hands in hers.

“Oh,” she gripped his hands tighter between her own. “I see that I’m not the first to look in on these young ones.”

“Excuse me?”

Qingzhao shushed him loudly. “Don’t interrupt!” She gripped his hands and was silent for a long moment, as her eyes fell closed and her head tilted toward his midsection as thought she were listening to a badly tuned radio. Snape sat quietly, trying to be patient as she held his hands and sat still and in complete silence. She hummed softly and then, finally, smiled and opened her eyes.

“Well, you’ll have your hands full to be sure with your little snakeling and drop of poison.”

Snape felt himself go cold and still, and even his to-be offspring held themselves poised as though they understood the power of this particular revelation. 

“What?” His voice sounded as cold and brittle as the thin layer of ice that crusted his damp hair in the early morning. “What did you say?”

Qingzhao peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Your little ones – it’s how they think of themselves. The Snake and the Poison.”

He pulled his right hand from hers and set it against his belly. There was a single firm kick on the right side and he was suddenly clear that this one, the more aggressive of the two, was the Poison, which made the watchful one the Snake.

“The Snake and the Poison will make you immortal,” he murmured and startled as Qingzhao laughed.

“I know I’m not the best example, as I’m pushing a solid one hundred and eighty now, but I can tell you that children are not your best bet at immortality. They’ll take years off you.”

Qingling gave her mother a small shove and snapped, “Mother!” 

“Well, they do! Without you and your brothers, I’d probably be two hundred by now.”

“That is not how time works.”

Snape stared at them as they argued, feeling all too aware of the pulsing of his blood through his body, of the beating of his heart, seemingly amplified by his frozen mind, focused as it was on this singular thought. This, this is what that hack seer had predicted so long ago. This is what had falsely confirmed to him that Voldemort was where he belonged. This is what led him for every step through his twenties, his thirties, to this very moment. The Snake and the Poison. 

He was such a complete idiot. His entire fucking stupid life was built on this, a charletan fortuneteller telling him he would be immortal and it had all been about _reproduction._ How perfectly and completely inane. How normal. How _average._ The prophecy had not been about his skill at poisoneering, his destiny, but instead had been about something so common, so everyday, that any two people with a spare five minutes could accomplish it.

Although, he granted, it was, at least by proxy, about his potioneering. No one else had buggered up a luck potion so badly they ended preggers by way of a lover who had wanted so little to do with him afterward that they had picked up and completely abandoned their home, friends and entire life and fled to parts unknown.

Well done, that. Very impressive. Top notch.

“Well, thank you,” he interrupted the bickering between the two women, who both turned their heads toward him in tandem. “Very kind of you to make the trip. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.”

He made the initial efforts to stand before Qingzhao grabbed at his hand again and yanked him back down with surprising strength. 

“Oh no you don’t. I’m not through here and you, you don’t get to spiral down into whatever nonsense you’re telling yourself right now, you great daft man. All of you, useless without a woman to set things to rights. My husband was just the same – everything taken to the absolute worst, no middle ground. How you all manage to get through your days, I don’t know.”

“I manage just fine, thank you.”

“Mm, yes. I’m sure. Now, simmer down, and you,” Qingzhao directed this at her daughter. “Go fetch us some tea already, will you? I’ve been sitting here a full ten minutes and not been offered a drink. What kind of host are you?”

Qingling stared at her mother and then, in a huff, stood up and stomped away, muttering loudly as she went: “This isn’t even my house!”

After she was far enough away, Qingzhao turned back to him and gave him a pleased smile. “She’s a good girl. I didn’t want a daughter who didn’t speak her mind. But you won’t have any problem with that. Not with these two, particularly not with your little Poison. In fact, she’ll likely speak before she even knows her own mind, unlike your Snake. Silent, waiting and watchful, that one.”

“Why do they call themselves this? Neither seems a particularly flattering pseudonym.”

Qingzhao grinned and reached forward to take hold of his hands again.

“Oh, they’re well removed from the need to be socially acceptable, at the moment. No idea of propriety or decency. No idea of shame. Shame is a learned skill – we don’t pick that up until we’re a few years on this earth, if someone sets us the example, which they always do – and these two have no need to learn anything like it, not yet. Too busy growing lungs at the moment.” She turned his hands over in her own and compared her own palms to his. “And then, when you get to a certain age, you get the pleasure of unlearning that particular skill, and you can then say, do and be anything that strikes your fancy with no concern to anyone else’s shame whatsoever.”

She peered up at him and smiled crookedly. “I take it you never much cared for shame, yourself. Or perhaps cared too much. And since these littles ones have some genetic memory, I can see that their father had far too much shame for any one person to bear.”

“I am their father,” Snape began but she cut him off with another laugh.

“You are their mother,” and she accompanied this statement with a solid poke to his belly. A hard kick came back from his right side as he pulled away and she grinned. “You carry them. You will give birth to them. Motherhood has no gender. It is the long and arduous act of production. Fathers, bless them, make their deposit and come to collect when it is ready. And that is clearly not you. Potioneering is the same, is it not? The brewer and the patron?”

He did not answer, mulling over this new mindset for a moment, before he eventually inclined his head in reluctant agreement.

“As for your little ones, your Snake considers herself so because she waits and watches, and your Poison considers herself so because she prompts a reaction from all she touches and she has no desire to be beneficial to anyone who does not make an effort to understand her.”

“Poisons aren’t beneficial,” Qingling interrupted, as she came back over to them, a hot teapot floating after her as she carried three small cups.

“You use poisons to keep pests off your gardens.”

“Well, that’s hardly beneficial to the pests.”

“But it is for you and your plants and your harvest. Don’t be stupid. A poison, used in the right doses, in the right way, on the right target, can be very beneficial.”

Qingling rolled her eyes and served up the tea and distributed the cups. Snape curled one hand around the small, handleless cup, his other still held by Qingzhao.

“Is there anything else you want to ask?” Qingzhao asked and, after a moment, Snape shook his head.

“Other than their health and happiness, there is little I seek for them.”

Qingling snorted but was quickly shushed by her mother with a sharp look.

“We all want health and happiness for the ones we carry, although the world has a tendency to flout those particular plans.”

“Then they will not be healthy and happy?”

She smiled gently and patted his hand. “They will be, mostly. Your Poison will not seem happy, but she will ultimately get great joy in her apparent misery. She will very much enjoy setting others at ill-ease. And your Snake, well, one who sees as much as she will always find trouble, but she will know where she is safe. And that will always be with you.”

“Will they…” Snape hesitated, his hand curling into a ball in the lose hold of Qingzhao’s. He took a deep breath. “Will they ever know their father?”

Qingling narrowed her eyes at him, but he ignored her and kept his own eyes on Qingzhao, who tilted her head, her eyes going soft and unfocused.

“Yes. Against your own efforts, I will say, but yes. Yours is not a complete story, Severus, and that, between you and he, is not a finished chapter. I can’t see anything for you, that is not my power, but for them? Yes, they will know their father.”

“I should hope, what with him being right here,” Qingling broke in and her mother shot her a hard look.

“Be quiet, you. Don’t speak if you have no wisdom to support it.”

Snape tuned them out as they began to bicker again, and he slid his hand from Qingzhao’s grip to rub at his belly. He lifted the cup to sip at the sharp gunpowder tea and allowed himself a small smile as he felt a decisive kick to his left side.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I did it! Posting when I said I would. Who would have thunk?
> 
> No Severus in this one, unfortunately, but won't be long now until my boys are reunited!

Harry paused in his pacing and tapped the toe of his trainer against the marble wall, earning another raised eyebrow from the security guard who had been eyeing him suspiciously for the last twenty minutes. He offered her a crooked smile and muttered a broken apology in his best French. She didn’t look impressed.

Ron and Hermione were late. Maybe they had been held up at the Ministry. Maybe there had been a problem getting the portkey organized. Maybe the Daily Prophet had gotten wind of it all and they’d been held up by reporters.

Maybe they weren’t coming.

He checked the large clock hanging over the arched marble doorway. He turned back to pacing and his trainer made a loud squeak sound against the polished floors. He winced and snuck a quick look at the security guard, who finally gave up the pretense that Harry was anything close to acceptable, and she approached him, her own shiny shoes clicking against the floor.

“Bonjour. Puis-je vous aider? Vous ne pouvez pas traîner ici.”

“Ah…” Harry bit his lip and hesitated. He didn’t know what the last sentence meant, but he gathered that she was asking if she could help him. But he wasn’t sure he knew how to answer – even after all these months, his French was still awful. “Um… bonjour. Uh, non, je – je écoute quelqu’un?”

The woman tilted her head and seemed to swallow back a sigh. “I asked if I could help you. This is an office building. People are working. You can’t just hang out here indefinitely.”

“Oh! Oh, sorry. No, I’m waiting for someone. I’m sorry. They’re running late, I think. They had a – a meeting here and I’m supposed to meet with them afterward.”

“Who were your companions meeting?”

“They’re, um… they’re international students and here to talk to someone about work permits, I think?”

She gestured toward one of the many benches lining the wall and told him in a firm voice, one that indicated her words were not a suggestion: “Please have a seat while you’re waiting.”

“Yes, of course,” he moved toward the closest of the benches when, to their left, a door swung open down the hall and Harry straightened as Ron and Hermione emerged from it. They glanced hesitantly from left to right before their eyes landed on Harry’s. Ron’s expression hardened and Hermione went pale, and before Harry could figure out what caused that reaction, Hermione was already rushing toward him, her arms outstretched.

The security guard backed off just before Hermione flung herself at Harry, who let out a soft oof as he caught her.

“Harry!” She squeezed him until he felt his ribs creak and then she held him out at arm’s length. Her eyes were misty as she exclaimed, “Look at you!”

He glanced down at himself and then frowned up at her. He glanced over as Ron ambled over to them, all long, awkward limbs and wide, muscled shoulders, as though he had reached adulthood rather suddenly and his body still didn’t quite know how to adjust.

“You look good, mate, I think she means. Better. Healthier. Also,” Ron nodded toward Harry’s face, “there’s that.”

Harry reached a hand up and his fingertips hit the eyebrow piercing that he usually forgot all about unless he caught himself in a mirror – or sometimes when he pulled a shirt over his head and a button caught on it. He’d gotten it months ago, one blurry night, after Jean-Michel had decided on a drunken tattoo and a small pack of the guys at the club came with. It was lucky he hadn’t pierced something else, what with the peer pressure and examples set that night. Two of them had left the tattoo studio walking funny.

“Yeah. I forgot I did that.”

“You finally cut your hair too.”

Harry nodded and ruffled his fingers through the cut. It wasn’t short, still sitting at about chin length and parted haphazardly in the middle,but his curls had been partially tamed by a styling wax that Jean-Michel had made him buy, although still fairly riotous about his head. It exposed much of his forehead and his scar, which he had originally been extremely uncomfortable about doing, but no one in Montreal knew who he was. The scar didn’t make people stop and stare at him, and the few people who did ask about it, he told them he’d fallen while hiking, and no one ever questioned it. It was freeing.

“My friend Jean-Michel, he’s a bit fashionable. He said we couldn’t hang out unless I let his hairdresser cut my hair.”

“You’re doing well then. Better.” Ron’s voice was tight and Harry caught the movement as Hermione nudged Ron lightly. “You’ve got, ah… You’ve got new friends.”

Harry nodded slowly, his words caught in his throat. “Yes. I’m…”

The security guard cleared her throat and said, “If your meeting is concluded, I’d suggest you take this outside.”

Harry startled as she spoke and he gave her a quick nod as he motioned awkwardly toward the exit.

“Did you bring coats?” He asked them as they walked toward the main entrance. “It’s cold out.”

Hermione hefted the bag she had slung over her shoulder and said, “I’ve put it all in here. Coats and also hats, scarves and mittens and thick socks and long underwear and boots too. When I checked the weather here, I saw that it hadn’t snowed too much, so I didn’t pack skis or snowshoes, but now I’m not sure if I should have packed some? It’s a city, so we should be fine, right?”

“Oh, it’s cold, but you definitely won’t need snowshoes to get back to my flat. You’ll want to put your coats on and probably hats and scarves too, what with the wind.”

Hermione pulled two coats from her relatively small bag and handed one over to Ron, who shrugged into it and then held Hermione’s bag as she slid into her own. 

“Is this Jean-Michel you mentioned, is he – um, is he a good friend?” She asked as they stepped outside. Her hair whipped around her head as the wind caught it and she took a knit hat out of her bag and pulled it down snugly over her head and then contained the rest of it by wrapping a scarf around her neck, trapping her hair beneath it.

Harry hesitated and rubbed the back of his neck in discomfort. He wasn’t sure how upfront to be with them. He had slept with Jean-Michel a handful of times, and Billy, and so many others, usually while very drunk. That was months ago, before he had started therapy and made changes to his life, and he had no desire at all to go into all of that – to tell them how little he had cared about his life, how far he had sunk, what he had become. He was better now, better than he had been at least, and he’d rather go on from there. He didn’t need to tell them anything else.

“He’s just a friend,” Harry finally replied.

“It’s good to have friends,” Ron replied in an oddly flat voice and Harry winced.

“We can go around the corner here to apparate to my flat. It’s only a half hour walk from here, but I figured you’d probably want to skip that.”

Hermione smiled at him, although it looked rather strained in the corners and she said, “After you.”

Harry led them around the corner, wedged between two large green dumpsters, and they all clasped arms and he apparated them into the small living room of his flat.

They were immediately surrounded by the scent of brewing coffee and the din of the cafe beneath his flat and when Ron took a small step back away from him, he immediately tripped over Harry’s small coffee table and fell backward into his ratty sofa.

Harry winced and reached down to heft Ron back to his feet.

“Sorry about that. It’s not a big place.”

“It’s nice though,” Hermione said with a skeptical look on her face as she cast her eyes over the small flat and Harry scanned over the space as well, trying to see it as they might.

It was very small. He had room for a three person sofa and a very small coffee table, one standing lamp and a small, square television. His kitchen was tucked into the corner and had the basics, but certainly nothing more. The floor was bare, the walls were slightly off-white, and there was a large crack running from one corner of the ceiling to the window frame on the other side of the room. His bedroom was separated from the living room by a thin wooden door and his small washroom was off the bedroom and more or less the size of a phone booth.

He could have afforded better, but at the time, he hadn’t cared. He needed to pretend he had a place to live, because it just wasn't on to be homeless, apparently, but he’d rarely been home. It was only recently that he’d furnished the place at all. At first he’d transfigured the oven into a bed when he was home to need one, which was not often. It hadn’t exactly been comfortable, but with enough alcohol, anywhere was a fine place to sleep, he’d learned. He could still afford better as he’d only put a very small dent into his vault fund even with going to bars and clubs nearly every night, but he liked the smallness of it. It made it clear that it was temporary. That he would one day go home.

Wherever home was. 

He wasn't sure if that could be with Severus now. He wanted it to be, but maybe it was too late. He didn't even know how Severus was, what he was up to.

Harry glanced at Hermione and briefly considered asking her before he immediately chickened out. She'd tell him eventually, he figured.

“You can both have my bedroom and I’ll take the couch.”

Ron and Hermione shared a look and Harry hesitated.

“Oh, are you… I figured you’d be sharing a bed by now.”

“Who said we might be?” Hermione snapped back, but Harry glanced at Ron and noted the upward curl of his mouth as he gazed at Hermione.

“Right. Well, I don’t have much space, so hopefully you’re both fine with sharing, but you can do or not do whatever you want in my bed. I won’t ask for receipts.”

Ron glanced around the small space again and then said with a slow hesitation, “Looks like you’re on your own. I would have thought you and Snape would be sharing.”

Harry’s head snapped up. “Snape? He… he isn’t here. Why would you think he was here?”

“He isn’t?” Hermione blinked at him. “But… he left at the same time as you. We just assumed…” She shared an uneasy look with Ron. “We assumed you’d left together.”

“Severus is gone? He isn’t at Hogwarts?”

“He disappeared the same night as you, mate,” Ron said as he crossed his arms across his chest. His voice was as tight as his shirt was across his shoulders. “Only Snape left without saying anything at all, instead of making a Gringott's _assets manager_ write us a letter. Like a friend would do, you know."

“Ron! Hush it!” Hermione hissed at him, but he ignored her.

“Thanks for that, by the way. A letter from a goblin and a pile of cash – because that’s what we want from you, right? Your money? That’s why I’m friends with you, you think? ‘Course, you don’t need to say goodbye to a Weasley if you give just them money, right? Because that's all they want, right?"

Harry’s mouth dropped open. 

“That’s not what I meant by it!”

“How else was it supposed to look, hmm?”

“You had both put up with so much from me. I just wanted to…”

“Pay us off.”

“Ron! Stop!” Hermione rounded on him, her face red with fury. "Or I'll… I'll hex your mouth shut, and don't think I won't!"

Ron pinched his mouth shut with a stubborn and sullen look.

"We are here because we care about Harry. We aren't here to fight! Things happened, okay, but we're going to move past that now because things were hard then and we understand that and we care about each other and so we forgive each other. Right? Okay? Go take my bag to the bedroom and calm down a minute."

She thrust her bag at him and he yanked it from her and stormed off through the door, slamming it behind him, and she sighed and seemed to slump down into herself as soon as he was gone.

"Sorry," she said and began to unwind the scarf from about her neck. She gripped it between her hands, twisting it slightly, and then let it drop onto his small coffee table. "He's been… It's not been a good few months for him. Or me. Or you, I'm sure. We'd thought you'd run off with Snape and… Well, we'd thought you'd run off to be happy without us, I suppose."

"No, I…" Harry's heart beat thunderously in his chest and he felt his hands begin to shake. He stuffed them down into the pockets of his jeans. In his bedroom, he faintly heard his landline ring before it was abruptly cut off, but he paid it no mind. "No. I was… I guess I was trying to protect you."

"From what?"

"From me."

She frowned at him and pulled the hat from her head as well, ruffling her hair back into its standard disarray. "From you?"

He nodded. "I was angry. Not at you, not specifically, but at everything. Everyone. Myself, mostly. And I… I had already hurt you so much. I didn't want to do it more than I had. And I was a mess, otherwise. I wanted to give you both space to… I don't know… to live. To move on from the war and everything and get better. Have lives."

"And we couldn't do that with you there?" Her voice rose sharply. She glanced over at the closed door and pinched her lips shut in a thin, angry line.

He shook his head slowly. His thoughts were as jumbled as the string of fairy lights Jean-Michel had tried to make him untangle and hang up at his place over the holidays. He'd used magic in the end, that time, but his powers weren't going to help him this time around.

He knew it had been wrong to just leave, or… well, Christine had been trying to convince him it was misinformed to have made that decision on their behalf. She said it was unfair of him to have decided that because he wasn’t handling his own emotions well meant that they couldn’t handle his emotions either. She had said that unless a person had specifically said something was true, it was jumping to conclusions to assume it on their behalf and this made Harry remember the old thing that he’d heard other children say when he was young – that assuming made an ass out of you and me. 

He’d repeated the thought to Christine and had finally seen her crack a smile for perhaps the first time in their acquaintance, her face transforming into something soft and she had said, “Yes, exactly.”

Harry sucked in a deep breath and let it out with the same force before he explained, “I needed to get away. From everything. Everything that made me Harry Potter, I think, or that made me the Boy who Lived. I… it was awful. Everything was awful. And I –”

He cut off as his bedroom door swung open again and Ron barged out.

“You’re just out here partying?!”

Harry and Hermione stared at him for a beat, the silence of the small room near deafening for that short moment, before Hermione asked, “Ron, _what_ is your problem?”

“Your tellyphone rang. I answered it. Thought that might be the polite thing to do. But turns out whoever it was just thought I was your latest boytoy and invited us _both_ over to some sort of orgy or something? A fuck party? This what you’ve been doing out here this whole time? We’re over there worrying ourselves sick, barely sleeping, trying to get through school and work and feeling like so much leftover trash, and you’re just, what, shagging your way across Canada? Having a jolly fucking time? Real nice.” 

Ron thrust the satchel back at Hermione and jerked his head at her as he said, “C’mon. I’m not missing training for this arsewipe.”

And, with that, Ron stomped over to the front door and flung it open. It crashed into the wall, the doorknob lodging itself into the cheap drywall, and he stormed out, leaving the door stuck hanging open.

Hermione, mouth agape, turned to stare at Harry.

“I…” Harry started and then cut himself off. “Shit.”

“I’ll go after him,” she said, grabbing for her hat again, but Harry stopped her.

“No, no. I’m the one who screwed up. I’ll go after him. You stay here.” He quickly jotted down his mobile number on a scrap of napkin and pressed it into her hand as he grabbed for his jacket. “Call that if you need me.”

She stood holding the napkin, mouth still hanging open, as he went over and yanked the door from the wall, which released with a muted crunch of broken drywall, and he swung it shut behind him.

Harry jogged down the two staircases that took him down from his flat to the road and he glanced left and right to see which way Ron had gone. They had apparated to his place, so Ron couldn’t know which way to go, if he was trying to get back to City Hall to organize another portkey.

About a block to his left, in what _was_ the correct direction, Harry caught sight of Ron’s hair, bright against the background of greying city snow.

“Ron!” He called out, even knowing the futility of it against the noise of traffic. Ron was walking in a long-legged fury, power walking against the flow of the people trying and failing to share the sidewalk with him. He sprinted after his friend. 

His trainers slapped against the pavement and people dove out of his way as he passed them by.

“Sorry!” He called out as he accidentally sideswiped a man into a snowbank.

He finally caught up to Ron, whose shoulders tightened as he heard Harry reach him although he didn’t stop walking, and Harry panted, “Ron, hey. Ron. Stop. Please. Let me explain.”

Ron skidded to a stop suddenly and turned on him. Several people had already crossed the road to avoid them, and those who hadn’t tried their best to squeeze through the narrow space left between them and the snowbank to the right and the building to the left.

“Explain! Yes!” Ron flung out his hand and nearly clipped a woman in the face. “Please do explain! Tell me about how you disappeared for nearly seven months, leaving me to worry after you like I’m possessed by my own mother, and you’re just here! Getting dicked down in what has to be the coldest place in the entire world. Did your bullocks freeze to the pavement? Is that why you couldn’t send me a fucking letter? Not even one? Not even one that said, ‘Hey Ron. No need to worry about me. Just shagging my way through the tundra. All good. Love Harry.’ Not even that?”

“I, uh,” Harry glanced around at the people trying their best to ignore them. “Can we take this somewhere more private? Back to my place?”

“Oh, I don’t think so! You’re going to explain right here, if you can explain, that is, which I doubt.”

“Maybe just a side street? There’s one right –”

“Fine!” Ron snapped at him and turned away. Harry reached out and desperately caught his arm before he could storm off again, but Ron pulled away from his grip and moved over to stand in the alcove of a closed storefront. He crossed his arms over his chest again and snarled, “There. Happy? Talk.”

Harry shuffled after him and took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Well?” 

Ron didn’t look like he was in the right mindset to listen, but it was all Harry had to work with, so he took another breath and then said, “I was fucked up.”

Ron barked a laugh. “You’re telling me.”

“No, Ron, I mean…” Harry sighed and rubbed his neck, ruffling his hair. “I was really, really not okay. I was… I killed him and I couldn’t… I crushed his heart in my hands and I died. I mean, I actually died, I know, but I died when I killed him. I… I loved him. I couldn’t keep living my life anymore.”

Ron frowned deeply and shook his head. “What do you mean? You killed Voldemort, not Snape. You saved Snape’s life.”

Harry lowered his eyes to the bits of refuse cluttering the small alcove and scuffed his shoe through it. “I don’t mean Severus. I mean… I loved Voldemort, Ron. Tom. I loved Tom. And I killed him.”

He heard Ron suck in a sharp breath and then silence. Harry finally dared to look up and Ron had his head tilted to one side, his eyes studying Harry as though he were a particularly complicated chess move. It made Harry’s breath catch.

At that moment, Harry’s mobile rang loudly, startling them both. Harry fished it out of his pocket and checked the caller quickly before answering.

“Hermione?”

“You caught up with him?”

“Yes. He’s here.”

“Good. Put him on.”

Harry glanced at Ron and then tentatively held out the mobile to him. Ron frowned again and took it the way one might receive an oversized slug and held it up to his face in a clear mimicry of what he had seen Harry do.

“Yes?”

Harry could only faintly hear Hermione’s voice, but not clearly enough to hear her words. Ron's face darkened over again and he opened his mouth, clearly ready to argue, but Hermione’s voice cut in again, louder this time and Ron finally slumped and sighed.

“Okay. Okay! Yes. We’ll – We’re coming back! Yes. Yes. I swear. Okay. Here he is.”

Ron handed the phone back with a roll of his eyes and Harry answered it again.

“Hi?”

“Body-Bind him if you have to. I’m not being kept out of this!”

Harry laughed despite himself and made eye contact with Ron. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. We’re on our way back.”

“You better be. I can and will find you if I have to,” she warned and hung up.

Harry replaced the mobile in his pocket and then glanced over at Ron again. 

His friend was again watching him closely, studiously, but then gave a slanted smile and said, “Guess we should head back. If she has to come out after us, you’re going to have the privilege of witnessing a rousing domestic.”

“Wouldn’t be the first one I’ve seen,” Harry responded automatically, feeling awkward, and he gestured back toward the sidewalk for them to head back. Ron fell into step beside him and, for a good block, they walked in a tense and uncomfortable silence. Harry knew that Hermione wanted to be a part of the conversation but he wasn’t sure if he should continue what he had been saying to Ron only a moment ago. It was strange to interrupt it at that moment, and it was stranger still for Ron to let it go as he had, Hermione or not. Ron never did let anything go.

Harry opened his mouth wordlessly but he must have made some small noise, because Ron suddenly stopped and turned on his heel and Harry found himself having to skid to a stop to avoid running into his friend. 

Ron put out a hand to steady him and left it on his shoulder. “Look,” he began and then stopped talking. He tilted his head and stared at Harry with worrying intensity.

“Yes?”

Ron shook his head and gave Harry’s shoulder a light squeeze. He dropped his hand and then stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans as he glanced away down the street. “We should go back. Hermione’ll…”

“Ron. What is it?”

Ron sighed heavily and looked back at him briefly before turning his eyes back down to the pavement. “I thought you’d write and tell me where you were. I figured you needed space. But then you didn’t write. And you didn’t come back. And it turns out that I’m one of the people you needed space from. I was… I was part of the problem. I was part of what made you leave. And I’m… I’m really sorry for that. I didn’t realise I was – ”

Harry slid forward a step and shook his head vehemently, knocking their shoulders together. “No, not at all. Ron, no. There were a lot of problems, I mean, more than just me being in love with Tom fucking Riddle. There was Dumbledore. There was Neville and Hagrid and Remus. There was… fuck, there was the Prophet and Rita Skeeter. There was just being the Boy Who Lived and being the Boy Who Lived Again. I couldn’t face that. It was everything. But not you. Not you and not Hermione.”

“What did Neville, Hagrid and Remus do?” Ron frowned at him.

A bitter laugh scraped out from between Harry’s teeth. “You didn’t know? Of course you didn’t know. You wouldn’t have… You wouldn’t have let them.”

“Let them what?”

Harry hesitated and then said, “I’d rather only say it once, if that’s…”

“Right, yeah, okay,” Ron interrupted, nodding. “Yeah, I get that. Okay. Keep going?”

Harry gave him a tight, grateful smile and followed along. 

“I’m sorry. I'm sorry I left without telling you why. Without telling you anything.”

Ron glanced over at him and nodded. “I’m sorry you felt like you had to.”

Tears pricked Harry’s eyes and he swallowed them back down a throat squeezed tightly around the sudden clutch of emotion. He reached out blindly and grabbed at Ron’s forearm and Ron looked at him questioningly again.

“I love you.”

Ron blinked at him and then smiled crookedly. “I love you too, Harry. You’re always going to be my favourite brother, you know that, right?”

Harry laughed brokenly and said, “Yeah, I think I do.”

They walked back up the staircase to his flat and opened the door to find Hermione sitting on the floor in the doorway to his bedroom, the telephone beside her and stretched to the full extent of its cord. She shot up to her feet when they came in and she pushed herself into Harry’s arms and clutched him tightly.

While still holding Harry, words muffled into Harry’s shoulder she said, “Do not leave me like that again, Ronald Weasley. Do you hear me?”

“I know. I’m an idiot.”

She pushed away from Harry, although she still held on to him, and she huffed, “Yes, you are, but you’re my idiot. And my idiot doesn’t do stupid things without checking with me first.”

Ron grinned and twisted his finger into one of her curls before going and flopping down onto Harry’s sofa. “Let’s all sit down and get comfortable before we get into this.”

“Anyone want tea?” Harry asked as he moved toward his small kitchenette.

Hermione gave him a long look, however, and told him, “You talk. I’ll make tea.”

Harry slumped against the wall and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Okay, but I have no idea where to start.”

“Well, I have some questions, so we can start there,” Hermione said as she filled and plugged in the kettle. “You said you were angry. Who were you angry with?”

Harry gave a brittle laugh. “Basically everyone? I ended up there on purpose, did you know that? They sent me there on purpose.”

“Where? Who?”

Harry sucked in a painful breath and then laid it all out for them, the sordid details spilling out of him like so much rotting refuse overflowing from a neglected bin. He told them about Dumbledore being infected by the potion Severus had once invented. He told them about how Voldemort had used Dumbledore’s love of prophecy against him, but how it took so little to press him to follow along. The old man had already been predisposed to sacrifice a child to prophecy.

He told them about Dumbledore’s Inner Circle and how so many people he had trusted had betrayed him in favour of the old man’s prophecy. Hagrid. His true first friend. Who had made him his first birthday cake. Remus, his last family. Even Neville had betrayed him. They had all sent him to that place and had looked the other way as all of those terrible things had happened to him. They had sent him there because of those terrible things. On purpose.

“Who told you all of that?” Ron asked. He had sat up from his insouciant slump on the sofa and now sat on the edge of it, his hands balled into fists and pressed into the meat of his thighs.

“We believe you, of course,” Hermione cut in with a sharp look over at Ron. The kettle boiled and clicked off and she shot it a look of annoyance, as if it had rudely interrupted her. She threw open two cupboards, blindly looking for teacups and slammed three down on the counter hard enough that the bottom edge of one chipped.

Ron glared at Hermione and said, “Yeah, right. ‘Course, we believe you. But maybe not so much whoever told you that. Depending on who it was.”

Harry sighed and watched as Hermione mended the cup. He reached over and pulled out the box of tea and put a bag in each cup. “It was Rita.”

“ _Skeeter?_ You believe anything that comes out of _her_ mouth?”

“She had proof. She had details that… that I couldn’t help but believe. She wasn’t lying to me.”

“She was maybe misinformed?” Hermione asked, her eyebrows raised so high on her forehead, they disappeared into her cloud of hair. She held the kettle forgotten in one hand, steam rising from it. “Maybe she just _thought_ some things had happened? It wouldn’t be the first time she twisted a kernel of fact into something insane.”

Harry opened his mouth to keep arguing but then shut it with an audible click. Hermione was right. Rita was dramatic. She had seemed earnest, had seemed to truly believe what she had told him, but anyone could believe something that wasn’t true. He, himself, had believed Tom Riddle had loved him. Nothing could be less true than that.

“Maybe,” he admitted finally. “I was in a bad place and I was ready to believe what she told me. I mean, Dumbledore, in that place, the Boundaries, he told me that he used people, that he twisted them, and that no one should be held responsible for their actions except him. Maybe this is what he meant.”

“Probably,” Hermione finally poured the tea and slid one of the cups over to him. “From what I gather, he was dabbling in a lot of people’s business. Who really knows what he would do if he thought it was for the greater good?”

“Yeah,” Harry slumped and wrapped his hands around the cup. It scalded his palms, but it felt almost as if it was what he deserved for believing something so terrible with no proof, especially as it had come from Rita Skeeter, whom he had never once trusted before in his life.

“Speaking of,” Hermione handed Ron his cup, set her own down on the small coffee table and then dug into her satchel. “I have a letter for you, from McGonagall. I’m not sure how she found out we were coming to see you, someone at the Ministry probably told her, but she gave this to us just this morning.”

She handed over a thick, rolled parchment, secured with a red and gold tartan ribbon and Harry accepted it, even as he felt a sick feeling spread in his gut. 

Everyone was angry with him. He had left without finishing his education, without a word, and had left Hogwarts in shambles, had taken no responsibility for the mess he had left behind. Who knew what she might have to say. At least it wasn’t a Howler.

He set down his cup and unfurled the parchment and skimmed his eyes down it, and then, disbelieving, read it over again more carefully.

She wasn’t angry with him. She was concerned. She wanted to make sure he was safe. She offered him a place at Hogwarts, if he wanted it, either to live or to work, or both. She had seen into Dumbledore’s pensieve and understood everything now and would gladly either relate it to him or would allow him access to the pensieve if he so chose.

Charges could be pressed, if he wanted to do so, against the members of the Inner Order. Dumbledore had blackmailed most, Moody seemingly the only exception, but that didn’t excuse their actions, she told him. Remus and Neville were both teaching at Hogwarts, but she would support any decision Harry made regarding a punishment or other actions of recompense that Harry deemed necessary for their involvement.

Hagrid, similarly, was willing and in fact seemed to be rather desperate to face consequences for his involvement. He had been found – he had been severely injured in the Forest and found half-dead by his half brother and dragged back to Grawp’s cave, where Grawp had nursed him back to health. He had suffered a significant blow to the head and it had taken several months for his memory to go from spotty to full once again, and once it had, he had returned immediately to Hogwarts to confess his involvement to the new Headmistress. Hagrid would not allow McGonagall to reinstate him as groundskeeper – he said he did not deserve it – and instead had been helping with the remaining cleanup and reconstruction and accepting absolutely no payment for his work.

If Harry wanted to come back to complete his education, she offered to assist him with that, or several students had taken a N.E.W.T equivalency exam, if that was preferred. Also several professions were offering to extend the length of their internships by a year for those students whose education was disrupted by the war and had extenuating personal reasons for not returning to Hogwarts to complete said education. There were options open to him, she explained. He did not need to let this affect his future, should he choose to return.

If he did not choose to return to the UK, she said she understood and she would do what she could to help him set up his education or career in Canada or elsewhere. 

He was missed. She wished him happiness and success whichever path he chose. 

And, she concluded, due to a tracking charm on an owl, she had some knowledge of where Severus had gone, should that be something he also wished to pursue, but she would first attempt to contact the man himself to verify if this was something he, too, wished.

Harry rolled up the parchment again and tapped it absently against his open palm. He slid the ribbon around it once again and set it down on his counter, next to his tea, and stared at it for a long moment.

“Well?” Ron burst out. “What did she say?”

“Ronald Weasley, mind your business!” Hermione chided him, but he ignored her as he sat forward even further on the edge of the sofa.

“She offered to help me, either here or back at Hogwarts. She’s not angry with me.”

“Well, of course not. No one is angry with you.”

“We were,” Ron cut in, “but also mostly just worried.”

Hermione rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed loudly. “Yes. Thank you, Ron.”

Harry picked up the parchment again. “She said she looked into Dumbledore’s pensieve, that there was information about his Inner Order. About Remus and Hagrid and… it sounds like Rita wasn’t completely wrong? But also might have been exaggerating or… Well, McGonagall said Dumbledore was blackmailing them, so… Things might not be as black and white as Rita suggested.”

“Yeah, nothing ever is. So…” Ron picked up his cup but didn’t drink from it, just turned it round in his hands. “Do you think you’ll come back, then? If not to Hogwarts then just… home?”

“I…” Harry hesitated. “I don’t know? I’m seeing a therapist right now and she’s really helping. She’s also been teaching me – she’s a witch and a psychiatrist – and we’ve been working on a new procedure. I can – I’m thinking of becoming a therapist myself? And I’ve figured out that I can combine my Legilimency with healing magic and, well, maybe I could help people that way? Like what I did to Bellatrix only not bad like that. Not awful. Something good. Something healing.”

“A mind healer instead of a mind flayer,” Hermione said and Harry nodded eagerly.

“Yes, exactly. Exactly.”

“D’you think she’d be willing to come with you back home?” Ron asked as he sipped his tea. “There’s lots of people who need help and St. Mongo’s wouldn’t know psychology if it bit them. They’re honestly just shoving people into this ward and hoping for the best.”

Hermione nodded just as eagerly and turned back to Harry. Her eyes were wide and sparkling with excitement at the prospect. “It’s true. Can I meet her? I’d love to talk to her. We’re stuck very much in the days of shell shock and nowhere close to being able to really help people with trauma. She could be so helpful. There’s such a dangerous gap in the medical field in Wizarding Britain, I cannot explain. If you came back and if she came with you, you could both – ”

“Mione, let the bloke make up his own mind, would you? You’re rolling right over him. I mean, look at him.”

She blinked to a stop and then stared at Harry, who did, quite honestly, feel incredibly overwhelmed. His mind spun with potential. Ron had seemed to propose the idea off-hand, but to Harry, it sank into his core with a weight and resonance that was nothing short of staggering. Maybe this is what he was meant to do? Maybe everything he had done and endured, maybe it all led to this, to helping people. To truly helping people. He knew that he had wanted to be an auror, once, but the idea of hurting anyone, killing anyone, it sickened him. But helping? Healing? Undoing the damage that had been done? And maybe that damage wasn’t his fault, he was beginning to understand that, but to fix it? He couldn’t begin to explain how much that meant to him.

“Holy shit, Ron,” he said instead and Ron blinked. “That’s perfect. You’re a genius.”

“I am? I mean, yes, of course I am. Good of you to notice.”

Hermione grinned at him. “We’d noticed before, Ron, I promise.”

Ron went pink and hid himself behind a sip from his cup.

Harry pulled his mobile from his pocket and held it up. “Do you want to meet her? Meet Christine? Because I think we might all have some things to talk about by the sounds of it.”

Hermione turned her grin on Harry and beamed. 

He couldn’t help but return the wide smile and said, “If I haven’t said so already, I’m really glad you both came.”

Ron raised his teacup in a cheers and downed the rest of it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this month has been a year, hasn't it? I hope everyone is safe and healthy and that all your loved ones are safe and healthy as well. I know you've heard it already, but stay in as much as possible and wash your hands, okay? Snape would be very disappointed in you if you did not take this pandemic seriously.
> 
> Oh, and a warning for potential squick in this chapter? Someone's giving birth and, you know, that gets messy.

“I hate this,” Snape said to himself in his empty room as he tried for the third time to lever himself up from his bed. He lay on his side, looking at the slit of sunlight shining through the shutters closed over his window. On his chest of drawers, he could see a letter from Minerva, which had arrived that morning and which he had not yet given himself time to read. Qingling had sent him to his room some few hours ago with the strict instructions to nap, as though he were a recalcitrant toddler, but he had felt lightheaded and exhausted, with an upset stomach and a headache that refused to subside, and so he had complied with relatively minimal complaint. He had even accepted the sedative she had offered him as he hadn't had a decent sleep in weeks.

Now, however, he was stuck like a beached whale that was unable to free itself from the sand, or in his case, the nest of blankets and pillows he used to minimize the pain his body subjected him to whenever he was prone, and to make matters worse, he still seemed to be having rather intense digestive cramps, which was marginally better than the heartburn he’d had the night before, but not by much.

He was nine months along and felt as though he had swallowed a particularly overgrown watermelon. He looked the part, as well – his belly stuck out directly in front of him, nearly the full extent of his arms, with no great press side to side. If he reached his arms out, he could lace his fingers across his belly, but could not bend his elbows. He could walk through doorways well enough, but turning corners sharply could be particularly disastrous. He knocked things off shelves and tables with unfortunate regularity. And sleeping had become something of a nightmare.

“I hate this so very much,” he told his belly and felt a sharp and brutal kick to his lower abdomen. “No, I don’t hate you, but I certainly hate this,” he corrected as he braced one hand under himself and hefted himself upward again. This time, he was able to untangle his legs from the blankets and put his swollen feet to the floor. Freed, he braced his legs and pushed himself upward, one hand supporting his unfortunately enormous belly and the other coming around, outstretched to catch himself if he toppled over yet again like a tower of bricks constructed by a particularly inept child.

Another sharp cramp shot through him and he cursed himself for gorging on the spicy lamb stew at midday. He had already been having digestive cramps all morning and Qingling had told him repeatedly not to eat anything too spicy since he suffered far too often from heartburn these last few months, but one of the twins, if not both of them, seemed to crave it, and now, as he told his belly firmly, he was the one paying the price. 

“I hate this. I hate this. I hate this,” he chanted as he waddled down the path toward the lavatories and continued to repeat the refrain as he made his way down to Niàn Zhēn’s laboratory. The cramps continued, and, as he knocked on his friend’s door, he wondered if he should have stayed in the lavatory for the near future. Had he known the number of hygienic near misses his pregnancy would cause him, he'd have seriously rethought the entire process. Not that he had chosen it, of course, but in retrospect, had he had any foreknowledge, he'd have remained very carefully and deliberately celibate. 

Harry Potter's smile, be damned. 

Blast him, blessedly free of this entire disaster. It would serve him right if Snape never allowed him to so much as glance at the creatures once they were freed of his body. Not that Harry knew about them. Or would want to know about them, Snape supposed. Minerva, in her subsequent owl, had informed him that Harry Potter was in Canada, although she revealed nothing more. Perhaps her most recent letter held more information, but he imagined Harry was likely happier, away from everything. Perhaps he, Severus Snape, held too many memories of the time before, and that Harry Potter truly was better off to be free of him. Two children would hardly be welcome in that case – a tie to bind him to a past he'd rather forget.

Niàn Zhēn’s door opened after only a moment and his smiling friend appeared.

“Severus! You shouldn’t be up, I don’t think. Qingling will have both our heads if she sees this.”

“I refuse to be kept to my bed like an invalid,” Snape responded, but sat down heavily on the nearest chair. He rubbed at his belly and decided to swear off anything remotely resembling a spice ever again, since pregnancy had given him far too British a constitution to withstand it.

“Well, this is likely the last place you should be. I’ve been brewing and the fumes might not be ideal.”

Snape scoffed and waved that statement away. “If my offspring cannot withstand potioneering, they are hardly worth the effort they give me.”

He winced as another sharp kick came high into his rib cage and a subsequent deep push into his bladder, and he gave his protruding belly a deep scowl.

“That is more than enough out of the both of you,” he told them, but then another sharp cramp gripped him, this time seemingly encompassing his entire body at once. He would have doubled over had his stomach left him the ability to do so. Instead, he cried out as pain pulsed through him and his vision went dark for a moment. It felt almost as if he had been stabbed, as if something sharp and jagged had ripped through his pelvis and tore him apart.

Just as suddenly, it passed, almost as if it had never happened, and he opened his eyes hesitantly, spots dancing in front of his vision, to discover he had somehow slid off the chair and crumpled to his knees on the floor of his friend’s laboratory. His thighs ached, his back ached, he felt strongly like vomiting, and he looked up to find Niàn Zhēn staring down with eyes wide with horror.

“Are you – My goodness, do you need – Should I get – ?”

Snape opened his mouth to answer, but another sharp pain shot through him and he cried out as he felt his belly swell within him, pressing outward in all directions – an over-inflated balloon with no space left to expand. It felt as if his small creatures were trying to press their way free of his skin, to tear free like chicks from an egg, and he pressed a hand to his belly and felt a sudden, powerful flow of panic fill his mind, bitter with fear and desperation.

“Get Qingling,” he gasped as another wave of agony and panic swept through him and he retched as every muscle in his body seized at once.

They were trapped. He had no way to expel them. They needed to be born but he had no way to facilitate it. They were going to die. Had he done this, had he carried them for so many months, grown to care for them, to know them, to learn their names, only to bear witness to their suffocation within the confines of his body? 

His Snake and his Poison. What had he done?

His body cramped over and over again, the waves of pain and fear crashing faster and faster through him until it felt as if it might only be pain, that there may be nothing else that existed, and he cradled his arms around his body as hot tears left salty, biting tracts down his face.

“Oh, for – Get out of the way, you great old baby. Men! Some help you are. Move!”

Snape looked up to find Qingling physically pushing her way past Niàn Zhēn into his laboratory, her knobby, twisted wand already extended, and a wave of her magic swept over him. The cramping dulled and the waves of panic and fear from his children subsided. He could still feel their sharp uncertainty, but their mad press for freedom was lulled.

“Calm down, you’re scaring them! Honestly, this is why men shouldn’t do this!” She dropped her bag to the floor and sank to her knees to rummage through it, before she pressed a vial into his hand and ordered, “Drink! Now!”

With no hesitation, he drank it, tasting it as the same sedative that she had given him earlier and he immediately felt a thick lassitude spread down his limbs. He barely registered it as her hands pressed his cramped form into a looser position, half reclined onto a thick pillow that she had yanked through the opening to her small bag and pressed between his shoulder blades and the floor. She then pulled a large, low bowl, wide as a platter, from the bag and lay it out on the floor beside him, and cast a cleaning spell over it.

“I usually assist with natural births, mind you, but I’ve done this too, don’t you worry your pale, stupid head about it. And you two,” she tapped his belly with her fingertips, “calm down. I know what I’m doing. You’re going to be fine.”

She shot an irate glance over her shoulder at Niàn Zhēn and told him, “You, come in or get out. This is not the time to linger in doorways.”

Niàn Zhēn jumped a little when she snapped at him and then came in and shut the door behind him. He nervously cast a brilliant illumination spell into the room, but Qingling glared at it and cancelled it.

“Men, honestly, I cannot believe… I do not need your help, especially if it’s going to be so stupid,” she muttered and then she cast several rapid-fire spells over Snape, in a tongue so ancient that his translation charm could not keep up, and afterward, she set down her wand and pressed both hands to his abdomen, bracketing his belly between her palms. She closed her eyes and exhaled long and slow, a breath that seemed to draw his pain and fear with it. 

She opened her eyes and met his and then, she smiled. “You’re going to be just fine. They’re healthy and ready. You are healthy and ready. You’re going to be just fine.”

He stared back at her, at her smile, overwhelmed to the point of numbness (although the sedative certainly helped with that as well) and she looked back down at his belly and pressed gently inward. He gasped as he felt the slow release of something, a disconnection, and then a strange stillness, one he hadn’t felt in months, a quietness and emptiness. A feeling of being alone.

He hated it.

Qingling lifted her hands from him and pulled at the empty air over the low bowl, as though tearing something unseen. The air shimmered and then split, and she reached in and helped a truly disgusting thing slip free of the tear in space. It was a lumpy, bloody ball of tissue, and Snape stared at it in horrified revulsion, especially when it moved ever so slightly, and he jumped as the tear in the air snapped shut again with a sharp sound.

Qingling glanced at him and then did a double take at his expression. “This,” she explained in slow, measured tones, with a lopsided smirk, “is your uterus. I didn’t imagine you’d still want it after this, and this will certainly make it much easier to extract them. But if you’re really broken up about it, I can always put it back afterward.”

He blinked at her and his mind almost refused to connect what he saw to any reasonable conclusions.

She rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the bloody bundle. She calmly lay the bundle down to rest in the bowl and then picked up her wand and cast a slow, sweeping spell over the bundle. It shifted again, a small ripple of movement, and it was only the knowledge that his children were within the bundle that kept his revulsion at bay. It became worse when she used the wand to cut open the uterus and reached her full hands within to pull out another bundle of tissue, this time translucent like an overstretched balloon, but he stilled as he saw his children through the barrier of the amniotic sac, curled about one another, their heads tilted together as though in whispered conversation.

And it was as if nothing else existed in the room, in the world, nothing had ever existed in his entire life before this moment, as he stared raptly as the two infants shifted within the confines of the tissue bubble, seemingly at ease, although he could not fathom how they could be. 

“Do you want to do the honours?”

He turned his wide eyes upward and focused on Qingling’s grinning face. “Do… do what honours? What?”

“Free them,” she explained and held up her wand as her other hand stroked gently against the side of the tissue bubble, tickling a tiny foot. “One small cut is all they need.”

“What? No! I – What if I hurt them?”

She grinned wider and rolled her eyes softly, with none of her usual judgement. “You big baby. You won’t hurt them. This isn’t your _sectumsempra._ It’s _caesaminima._ Right here,” she rubbed her fingers against the cheek of one of the babies, through the thin tissue and then pulled it a little to provide a small slack. “I can do it if you don’t want to, but you did all the work. Seems unfair that I should take the final step.”

He stared at her, his body strangely lax and his mind in a state of overwhelmed confusion. It had happened so quickly and now… He looked down at his children and his heart swelled and beat furiously.

He patted at his robe, which now lay sprawled about him, and reached blindly for the wand tucked into it. His hand shook as he held out the wand, and then, with one final, tremulous glance at Qingling, who nodded encouragingly at him, he cast the spell. A small tear appeared on the amniotic sac and it immediately split, and the two babies flopped apart in a rush of fluid, their arms falling away from one another, and one of them immediately opened her mouth and screamed, a piercing wail of absolute unhappiness. The other sucked in a deep, startled breath and then, silently, she opened her cloudy eyes and seemed to meet his own, watching him with a strange, calm fascination as her sister screamed.

Qingling grinned again and patted his shoulder.

“Good job, string bean. Look what you made.”

His heart thudded in his chest and he reached out with shaking hands, hesitating at the last moment and looking to Qingling. She nodded encouragingly again and he stroked his finger against the curled fist of the closer of the two, the silent baby.

The Snake, for who else could she be, grabbed his finger and curled her own fingers tightly about him, gripping as though she would never let go.

The Poison screamed loudly, angry and lost, and Snape reached out his other hand, curling up onto his side to reach, and took her hand as well. She grabbed hold with a fierce strength.

“Can I…?”

“Hold them? Of course. Let me get them cleaned up a bit and wrap them so they aren’t chilled, now that they’re out here in the open.”

She motioned for Niàn Zhēn to come over and help her, and the two of them fussed over babies. Niàn Zhēn wrapped the quieter of the two into a soft blanket and tucked her into the crook of Snape’s left arm, and Qingling coddled the screaming infant until she finally subsided into hiccuping sounds of annoyance rather than rage. She was tucked into his right arm, and he shifted in his seat as he stared down at the both of them. They each had a thick pelt of dark hair covering their scalps, one of which looked to lay flat and smooth and the other, the Poison’s, swirled in chaotic whorls.

“Do you know what names you’ll give them?” Niàn Zhēn asked, softly.

“They named themselves,” Snape answered, again in hushed tones.

“Snake and Poison? Poor things.”

Snape glared at Qingling. “I’m not naming them Snake and Poison. I’m naming them Ophidia and Belladonna.”

“Well,” the older woman huffed and reached out to tickle at Ophidia’s round chin. “That’s fine then.”

* * *

Harry stood by the narrow window in his living room and snapped his mobile closed with a now-practiced flip of his wrist. He wasn’t looking forward to losing the convenience of it when he got back to Hogwarts. He was grateful, though, that Hermione had either found or developed a charm that allowed a telephone to function on the magical grounds (likely, it was an Unspeakable spell, and while he was still unsure why she had joined the Department of Mysteries, he was glad she was willing to let him benefit from her insight). She had a charmed mobile phone, which she and Ron used to keep in close contact with Harry, but she had also had a telephone installed in the Headmistress’s office at Hogwarts and with those in place, Harry had been able to organize his return with far more ease than international owls allowed. 

When they had arrived to explain their sudden idea to Christine, those two months past, she received him and his friends thoughtfully. She listened to them, listened as Hermione and he had gone back and forth with their ideas for introducing mental health treatment to wizarding Britain. Ron sat back and listened similarly, leaving himself out of the conversation despite that it had all been his own idea in the first place, but he seemed more than content to let others take care of the details, seemingly more interested in the complicated coffee maker that Christine had in her office than anything else.

During their back and forth, Christine stood and opened her window, and retrieved a package of cigarettes hidden inside a phrenology skull on her bookshelf and tapped out a single cigarette. She raised a single, dark eyebrow at the occupants of the room before lighting it with their consent, and then she leaned against the window casement and silently smoked as she gazed out at the surrounding campus and listened to the two of them talk.

Hermione wasn’t sure how readily St. Mungo’s would adopt something new, so a private practice would likely be the best idea, she decided. Diagon Alley would be a good, central place to open an office, she thought, but Hogsmeade was an excellent alternative as well. Harry would need to complete a healer internship on top of his psychological internship with Christine, if he intended to practice within Wizarding Britain, and the healer internship would have to be completed with a British healer. Christine would have to apply for a permit to practice, but she had her credentials and Hermione did not anticipate any problems on that account. Harry could perhaps complete the two internships simultaneously? That would be a better use of time than to complete them one following the other, which would take years. 

This, of course, depended on whether Christine was, in fact, interested in their venture. She perhaps had existing commitments? She was tenured at the university. Was she allowed a sabbatical? Did she have family commitments? They should have asked that right away, shouldn’t they have? 

Hermione trailed to an embarrassed silence at that, and Christine reached out the window and stubbed her cigarette against the exterior stone wall and then tucked the butt into the skull and closed it up again. She rounded her desk once again and sat down wordlessly, as they all watched her, and then, finally, she spoke.

“I am pleased to meet your friends, of whom you have spoken so much.”

Harry grinned, even as Hermione blushed furiously and Ron finally looked away from pressing buttons on the coffee maker, his brows furrowing.

“I know. We can be a bit much.”

Her mouth turned up in the corner and she flipped open her day planner, flipping months in advance.

“I can take time when the term is over, near the end of May or later. I’ll have to submit my request for a sabbatical, but I haven’t taken a sabbatical in years and I can certainly write a paper out of such an endeavor, and so I don’t see any problem in that regard. As well, my classes for the next year have not yet been finalized, and Alexandre’s thesis defence is scheduled for late this April, and I am not acting as advisor to anyone else. At least, not as of yet. So the timing is ideal.”

She made a short note for herself on a yellow post-it note, which she stuck to her computer monitor, and then she closed her agenda and laid her hand flat against it.

“Now,” she said and reached down to a lower drawer and, from it, pulled a bottle of red wine. She waved her hand and transformed her nameplate, paperweight, penholder, and Freud bobblehead into wine glasses, dumped the pens from the now-wine glass, and then distributed the wine between them. “Tell me more about how we can make this work.”

That had been two months past, and Harry had managed to get as many ducks in a row as possible, thanks almost entirely to Hermione and those two telephones.

Apparently, when she had approached St. Mungo’s with the idea of mentoring Harry, several healers at St. Mungo’s had jumped at the idea, that is, until they learned about his plan to study under both them and a Canadian psychiatrist and to integrate Legilimency with healing magic. That’s not how it’s done, they had protested. Untried and untested procedures do more harm than good. Why bring in an outsider? Did he think so little of British healers and their practices? They had been the ones dealing with the aftermath of the War of Hogwarts, not him. He might be Harry Potter, but who did he truly think he was?

Hermione, though, was not one to take no for an answer. There was still one Healer who she knew, who knew Harry, who might be willing to take some chances – she certainly had never balked at chances before.

Harry startled from his thoughts as someone knocked at his door and he went to let Alexandre into his flat.

“I just got your message,” he waved his mobile. “Come in. You want a drink?”

Alexandre lifted the coffee cup in his hand, which had the logo from the cafe beneath Harry’s flat, and said instead, “You’re almost all packed. Not that there was much to pack, I suppose.”

Harry looked over his living room and shrugged. It was true that he hadn’t had much to pack. He’d shrunk all the clothes he’d acquired over the last nine months, but otherwise, there wasn’t much he either wanted or needed to take with him.

“I’ve got the lease ready over here,” Harry motioned to his kitchenette, where a stack of papers lay with a pen resting on it. “I can drop it off with the landlord after you sign it, if you want. After that, the place is yours.”

“Leaving me all the furniture too?”

“Everything except my pants,” he grinned, but the smile slid off his face as the joke fell flat with Alexandre. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Alexandre nodded and picked up the lease. He made a show of looking it over, but Harry could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “I’m fine. I wish I could come with you two though. I’ll miss you.”

“I’m sorry for stealing your professor.”

Alexandre gave him a quick smile and set down his coffee so that he could pick up the pen. He fiddled with it absently as he said, “No, that’s okay. I have to work under a different professor to complete my doctorate, anyway. And you’ll be sure Christine has a telephone wherever she’s set up, I imagine, so I can still talk to her if I need some extra support.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I guess I’m a little sad to miss out on everything you’re both about to do. And sad to lose two friends all at once.”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry about that.”

Alexandre smiled at that, and he turned back to the lease and looked it over quickly before he quickly signed it and handed it over to Harry. 

“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you’re finally feeling well enough to go home. Any word on if that man of yours will be there also?”

“Severus? I’m not sure, actually.” Harry folded the lease and slid it into the envelope he had waiting for it. “I hope so. I really hope so, but I’m not sure. He went somewhere after I left, and McGonagall had said she would let me know where he was, if Severus wanted to be found, but she hasn’t said anything more to me about it, and I haven’t wanted to ask. If he _is_ completely done with me, I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t think I could stand to hear it.”

“I’m sure that’s not what’s happened. I doubt very much that you’re that easy to get over.”

Harry blinked at him and then he asked, very tentatively, “Alexandre, I… I’m not sure how to ask this and not sound like an arse, but… I’m not, um, I’m not breaking your heart or anything here, am I?

Alexandre smiled and picked up his coffee again. He took a deep drink from it and then stared thoughtfully at the cup for a moment while Harry felt his heart sink.

“No. No, you’re not. I’ll miss you, of course, but I imagine we’ll see each other again. You’re, um,” he tapped his fingers against the side of his cup and tilted his head. “Hmm, how to say this. You’re the sort of person I _could_ fall in love with. I imagine you’re the sort of person a lot of people could fall in love with. And if things had been different, I think I likely might have fallen for you, but they weren’t different, and instead, you’re my friend and I’m glad you’re my friend. I wouldn’t change that. Besides, it’s clear that your heart already belongs to someone else.”

“I… I don’t think I know what to say.”

Alexandre grinned widely and grabbed the envelope from Harry’s lax fingers and hit him gently in the head with it. “You don’t need to say anything. Don’t make this awkward. I just answered your question. You’re not breaking my heart. I doubt I’m breaking yours. But I will miss my friend. So don’t forget to write or call or something.”

He held up the envelope and said, “I can hand this in. _You_ should get going. Where did you put the portkey?”

Harry hesitated and then gestured toward a small box on the counter, which had been delivered by a snowy owl the evening before. The owl had had different markings than Hedwig had had, but still, the sight of the bird had hit him with a sudden and overpowering feeling of homesickness and loss. He knew that the life he had had these past months, it was not the life she had sacrificed herself to give him, and, as the other owl had flown away into the evening light, he knew that he had to go home and, if nothing else, apologize to her grave for that.

He had a lot of people to apologize to, he knew, but there were also a lot of people who needed to apologize to him. He didn’t look forward to going through that, but at least he was in a better place now to hear them out than he had been. He didn’t have to forgive them. He and Christine had talked about that at length, about how he didn’t have to tell them it was okay, or that he understood. He didn’t even need to thank them for apologizing. He didn’t need to accept that apology, if he didn’t want to. 

He didn’t have to forgive them.

But he _could_ forgive them, if he wanted to. If he felt it was right. If they deserved it. Dumbledore was not a man to be questioned, he knew that as well as anyone, and he knew that any of them could have been victims of Dumbledore’s manipulations just as he had been. Perhaps they had not suffered what Harry had suffered, but victimhood was not a contest anyone could win. He understood that now.

Harry picked up the box, small, about the size of an orange, and he lifted off the lid. Inside, he found a battered looking pencil sharpener, green plastic, the blade of it slightly rusted. He snorted a little at the look of it, as he thought that it didn’t look too far off from how he’d probably looked walking off that cruise ship.

He tipped the box so Alexandre could see it, although he doubted his friend would understand why Harry found it so funny, and then, as he set it back down on the counter, he said, “I’ll go get my bag, then.”

“Need help gathering anything?”

“No, I already shrunk and packed everything last night, after I got the portkey. I don’t _think_ I’ve left anything behind?”

“If I find anything embarrassing, I’ll send you a picture of it before I share it with the other guys.”

Harry grinned. “Thanks. Appreciated.” 

He picked up the bag he had packed and left by the door to the bedroom and hefted it over his shoulder and then came back the short distance to peer down into the box again. He hesitated and then looked up at Alexandre again, and, suddenly, everything felt far too real.

“I… Alexandre, thank you. For everything you did for me. To help me. I… I mean, you saved my life. In more ways than one.”

Alexandre gave him a soft smile and reached over to gather him in for a tight hug. “You saved my life too. I needed a friend, just as much as you did, I think. I was feeling pretty alone here, and you…” He held Harry out a short distance and shrugged lightly. “Well, you made things better. I’m going to be pretty busy over the next few years as I get this doctorate finished, but eventually, I’m sure we’ll see each other again, and I look forward to getting to know you all over again when that happens.”

“You’re a really good guy. I kinda wish I’d fucked you when I wasn’t drunk and suicidal.”

Alexandre burst into laughter and pushed him away. “Okay, thank you. Take your pencil sharpener and go already.”

Harry grinned. He reached into the small box and grabbed the portkey. Alexandre took a large step back as Harry felt a strong hook grab him by the navel and tug him forward. The familiar walls of his flat disappeared and he shot forward, landing and barely keeping his feet as he stumbled onto grass.

He shook himself, patting himself down to make sure he still had his bag and all his limbs, and then he lifted his head and looked around to orient himself. 

In front of him, glowing against the dark blue evening sky, was Hogwarts.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, posting this ONE WEEK EARLY. Yes, I'm as surprised as you. Miracles can and do happen.
> 
> Stay safe, everyone! <3

Belladonna was finally sleeping. 

In the two weeks since the twins’ birth, Belladonna had spent the better part of her time screaming and fighting against her release into the world. She seemed determined to be angry for every inconvenience, no matter how small. Earlier in the day, the wind had ruffled the edge of her blanket and set her off. She had screamed at it, her fists flailing in the air in a show of rage, while her sister looked over at her with what appeared to be a raised eyebrow and an air of absolute disdain, despite that she was all of two weeks old. 

But for now, she slept – her tiny rosebud lips pursed as she breathed and her thin, pale eyelids twitching as she dreamt. 

She lay in a handcrafted cot, which Niàn Zhēn had brought and set up for him shortly after the infants’ birth. It was charmed to keep warm against the chill of the night air and to rock the two to sleep, which spared him the effort of doing so and gave his arms some small amount of rest. Whichever greater power had had the idea to invent babies hadn’t had the forethought to give humans more than two arms, and that was an absolute travesty of an oversight, in Snape’s opinion.

He still wasn’t free, however. Ophidia lay curled into the crook of his arm, very much awake as she took in the world around her with a watchfulness that would put Mad Eye Moody to shame. She seemed actively aware of her surroundings, in a way he hadn’t anticipated in a newly born child. She watched everything. Her little fingers twitched as though she wanted to reach out and touch and, once, she had punched him in the chin with a tiny fist, her eyes then going round and wide in surprise as she clearly didn’t understand how it had happened but was mesmerized by the contact. She immediately tried to hit him again with an uncoordinated fist, but as her hand was only slightly larger than his thumb, it was an easy blow to stop and she seemed fairly put out by the whole experience and had yet to reattempt it.

With a final check on Belladonna, he moved closer to his window so Ophidia could watch the people moving about, and as he did, he was immediately startled as a large owl flew past him into his bedroom, its wings clipping him against his face as it flew in. Ophidia made a startled sound and the owl cried out as she did, which then woke Belladonna who released a piercing wail of discontent, which then set off Ophidia, who cried in sympathy with her sister’s unhappiness.

The owl fluffed itself to twice its size, dropped the scroll it held on his bed, and took off again out the window with an indignant squawk, which left him with one letter and two crying infants and no owl.

“Bloody hell,” he said to himself as he took in the new cacophony in his environment. Belladonna screamed and her sister echoed her until he stuck the end of his thumb in Ophidia’s mouth and her cries immediately cut off as she gummed eagerly at his finger. She was the easiest to calm and he had discovered that she was the more food oriented between the two of them – easily calmed with even the hint that she might eat.

He set Ophidia down in the middle of his bed and levitated a bottle to occupy her, and then reached for Belladonna, who flung her fists about in his face, her tiny fingernails scraping against his cheeks, as she expressed her rage.

“Yes, yes,” he gathered her in and shushed her. “It was only a very stupid owl. The world is unfortunately full of the stupid and there is little that can be done about that except endure it.”

He tucked her in closer against his chest and glanced down to make sure Ophidia was still ensconced in her bottle, which she was. 

“Here,” he said to Belladonna and reached for the letter, which lay near to Ophidia’s socked feet. “Let’s find out what we have today, shall we?”

The roll of parchment was wrapped in waxed leather and secured by a tartan ribbon, clearly indicating its sender. It wasn’t particularly easy to unwrap one-handed, but he managed well enough to do so while still rocking the screaming Belladonna, and he unrolled the parchment.

A second and much slimmer roll of parchment slid out of the bundle and fell to the floor, hitting his foot.

He glanced down at it and then at the baby, who hiccuped through her tears, and then back down at the narrow roll laying against his foot and he sighed heavily. He turned his attention back to the letter that he still held in his hand.

Snape felt as if an entire lifetime had passed since he had received her last letter on the day of their birth. His entire world had been flipped on its head and reorganized around two entirely new human beings, and he felt a pang in his gut that Minerva did not know anything of his new life and of the lives he had created. He had never been overly forthcoming with her, much less with anyone else, but this, these two creatures, they were rather sensational. Clearly, they were his best creations to date and absolutely deserving of as much praise as could be heaped upon them. Minerva had never had children of her own, but he wondered how well she might like to be an auntie.

Ophidia made a wet sound and he glanced down to find that she had stopped eating and was now blowing a not-insignificant spittle bubble between pursed lips. He dabbed at her mouth with a corner of her blanket and she tried to turn her face away and made a small noise of discontented protest. He gently levitated her back to her cot, where he lay her down on her stomach, and she kicked out her legs in irritation.

“Yes, it’s frustrating, is it? Eventually, you’ll be able to do for yourself, but until then, I’m afraid you are somewhat beholden to me.”

He turned back to Belladonna, whose cries had calmed somewhat, although her face was still red with her unhappiness. As she noted a return of his attention, though, she gave another series of whimpering cries, and he shushed her again as he unfurled the letter.

“Let’s see what we have, shall we? _Dear Severus,_ it begins, and I am he,” he explained to the baby as she blinked through tears at him. She quieted as he continued to read Minerva’s letter to her, until her eyes began to droop again and she fell asleep against his heartbeat.

Minerva went on at some length about the repairs to Hogwarts and how her first year as headmistress had gone on, and then about the changes to the faculty that she would have to make before the summer was over.

Longbottom had achieved all the appropriate N.E.W.T.s, so she was finally able to install him as a full teaching professor – a relief, she explained, as several members of the board of governors had had some reservations about the young man teaching _and_ studying in the same year.

Snape couldn’t imagine that those reservations would end. Longbottom would still be an eighteen year old professor, and, from what Snape gleaned between Minerva’s lines, was currently romantically involved with a student who would be in her own final year. It would be better if Longbottom went and sought an internship elsewhere for a year or two, but Snape imagined that pickings were mighty slim in the after war times.

Minerva was also hoping to get his advice on another delicate faculty matter, she said, but explained that she didn’t expect he would be unbiased in the matter. She had precious few outsiders to consult, however, and trusted his opinion, even with a frankly warranted bias.

Sirius Black was becoming something of a problem, and when he read that, he laughed aloud and had to immediately stifle the sound as Belladonna made a small, sleepy sound of inquiry. He hushed her and tucked her down in the cot next to her sleeping sister, where she promptly fell back to sleep.

His hands free, he bent and picked up the second letter as he continued to read the first.

Something was wrong with Black, she explained, clearly at her wit’s end. While, in Longbottom, she had an actual teenager teaching, Black was the one whose maturity could not be relied upon. Black hadn’t prepared any sort of curriculum for the year, claiming he was better ‘on the fly’, but, she said, if this was him better, then she was loath to find out how he could be worse. He taught nothing and prefered to have the students duel, often dueling them himself, even those far too young for dueling. The number of injuries had skyrocketed. Parents were voicing concerns, which, for Hogwarts, was a thing of note onto itself.

Snape rolled his eyes again and said to himself, “Do you hardly wonder, Minerva.”

She should fire Black. He clearly was not up to the task. Whatever had happened to him in the Boundaries had not left a stable man, not that he had been so very stable beforehand. In fact, he sounded far too much like the Sirius Black who had tormented Snape in their own youth. No one should give any sort of power to that particular Sirius Black. He likely still thought himself immortal, in that way that privileged young men often do.

If Minerva wanted to make a name for herself separate from that of Albus Dumbledore, she needed to set firm and distinct lines from the beginning. Firing an incompetent teacher would be the least of it. He would strongly recommend she do just that, Gryffindor loyalty be damned.

She then complained at some length about Slughorn, who she had appointed in a fit of desperation to replace Snape as potions professor. While she did not say so directly, Snape could infer that she found him as insufferable as he had always been, which didn’t surprise him in the least.

Was he planning on coming back, she inquired, because if so, he could certainly return to his position as potions master. Or, if he prefered, he could take over Defence, as Sirius was not up to the task. He didn’t need to live in Hogwarts, if he didn’t care to. He could have an assistant professor appointed to him, if he didn’t want to work the same hours as he had. Could she tempt him with an increase in pay?

He allowed himself a feral grin at this. Minerva was not one to show her hand quite so blatantly, but here she was. He had no intention of moving his children anywhere anytime soon, however, not that Minerva knew of that, but he could just as easily tell her that he had no strong desire to return to Hogwarts in the near future. He had no particular motivation, after all. He was teaching where he was. He was brewing. What precisely awaited him at Hogwarts that was not the same as he had, only worse?

But then, tucked down under her faculty concerns, he was suddenly confronted with the name Harry Potter.

He felt himself go still and cold like frost at midwinter. His fingers, he was displeased to see, were shaking as they held the parchment and he flexed his hand to shake it of its tremors. 

Ridiculous. He was ridiculous.

He exhaled sharply and read from the letter again.

Harry Potter had returned to Hogwarts. He was to intern with Poppy. He wanted to be a healer. He had arrived on May 24th.

Which was the day he had given birth to his, to their twins.

Snape looked down at their cuddled and sleeping forms and swallowed heavily around a tight throat.

Harry was home.

Minerva had most certainly buried her lead, and Snape scanned the rest of the document hungrily, his heart leaping traitorously in his chest. 

Harry was looking well, Minerva said, and seemed healthy. He smiled again, she said, which was good to see, but he had pierced his eyebrow and looked rather piratical, which she didn’t think suited him, but it was his own life and his own face, and he had earned the right to disfigure himself, if he so chose.

Harry had asked after Severus, she said, but she wasn’t sure what to tell him, as Snape had never answered her as to what she could and could not tell the young man. Harry knew that she was in contact with him and that he was therefore alive and well enough to communicate, but she had not revealed Snape’s location nor any other details of his current life and livelihood.

Snape looked down at some of the details that had not been shared with Minerva herself and wondered what Harry might make of it.

How could Harry possibly react in any positive way? The young man was eighteen and could not possibly want the responsibility of an entire family at such a stage of his life, particularly not with everything he had been through to that date. Their relationship (dalliance?) had been extremely ill-advised, but perhaps a matter of survival, perhaps even for the both of them – Harry had needed physical grounding after his trauma and Snape had offered it. He had known all too well how adrift a person might be after Tom Riddle, had understood in a way that perhaps no one else could, and he could offer understanding and physical touch that was untainted by Tom’s insidiousness. Touch that was wanted and kind. 

He hadn’t truly anticipated caring so deeply for Harry. After all, Harry had once been the most insufferable of his students and the mirror image of his childhood tormentor. The young savior of the wizarding world was not anything that anyone might consider a good match for a nearly forty year old misanthropic professor, and yet, here they were. Perhaps he should have foreseen the likelihood that he would fall so heavily for his first true relationship, no matter his age. After all, he had never had any sort of relationship that was based on trust and common ground. Nothing _kind._ Before Voldemort, there had been Regulus, but that had been as unbalanced and unhealthy – truly only a stepping stone into the Death Eaters. He certainly hadn’t thought he loved Regulus, although he did mourn his death.

He’d thought he loved Tom, but that had been revealed as the delusion that it was. 

And afterward, there had been encounters, but primarily to further his work for either Dumbledore or Voldemort. Physical intimacy always led to a certain drop in physical and mental guards, and so had its uses, no matter how the act had repulsed him. Thankfully, that had been few and far between, and he had never given himself the luxury of someone of his own choosing and certainly had never given himself the space to develop a longstanding trust with another person. There had been… men. Mostly muggles who could be easily forgotten or, if necessary, confounded. But he had truly never had anything that one might mistake for a relationship, healthy or otherwise.

Harry had been different. Because Harry Potter could be nothing but.

Harry was stubborn and he was enamoured with pushing boundaries, flouting rules and breaking through defences. He was kind and thoughtful. He was generous with his love, all types of love – from philia to agape and indeed to eros – and he was giving of himself. In all honesty, Harry Potter was an unfortunate collection of dichotomies that fed rather perfectly into Snape’s own. 

Snape, and he could see this for himself now, had been rather starving for kindness and Harry Potter was nothing if not kindness.

Before that fateful morning where he had whispered a confession of love to Harry, warm in their bed, and had it resoundingly rejected, he had only ever said those particular words to his mother, and sparingly, oh so sparingly. Snape had learned from a very early age that any show of affection between his mother and himself needed to be kept secret and safe, for his father was, even on his best days, a brutally jealous man who could not tolerate being anything less than the sole recipient of his wife’s attention. Even as a small child, Snape could remember that crying when his father was home would result in no positive attention whatsoever, only punishment for needing and wanting what was not his to need and want. 

Love was a secret thing, to be kept hidden and protected from the light of day.

When he had told Harry that he loved him, well, that was not a mistake he had soon replicated. It had only reinforced in him that love was a thing to be kept hidden. But now, he looked down at the sleeping babies and felt something heavy lift from his chest. Now, he did not think that the love in itself was the mistake, nor the speaking of it. Only perhaps the timing and the recipient.

He stroked the tip of his finger against the outstretched palm of Belladonna and her fingers instinctively closed around his digit. Something very warm, like melted butter, spread through his core and he was sure that a very ridiculous smile was spreading across his face. His facial muscles were going to have to accustom themselves to this new expression, he knew.

“I love you both,” he told them in a soft voice and then added, “I know you’re asleep and also don’t yet understand speech, but I will tell you again. And then again. And then, perhaps, again, if you are good. And even if you are not. It will not be a thing of shame. Ever.”

They slept on, unaware of his revelations, and he smiled at them before returning to the letter.

Harry wanted to write to him, Minerva continued, and she had enclosed a short letter penned by the young man himself, to do with as Snape so chose. 

Snape looked down at the second letter, the smaller roll of parchment that had fallen from the first, and his pulse fluttered again in his throat. He was not at all certain that he was ready for that, but nor could he imagine himself putting the letter aside.

He took several fortifying breaths and unfurled Harry’s letter.

_Dear ~~Seve~~ ~~Sna~~ Severus,_ it began, and he traced his finger thoughtfully over the crossed out names. 

_I’m back at Hogwarts. ~~I’m here to~~ I hope you’re okay. McGonagall didn’t want to tell me where you were, but I know that it takes some time for her letters to reach you and vice versa, so you must be somewhere far away. Did you go to China? I hope so. I hope your days are full of learning and inventing new potions and everything else that makes you happy. I hope you’re happy._

_I’m so sorry for,_ and here there was a blob of ink, as though Harry had dithered over what words to write next, _leaving the way I did. I’m so sorry for so many things, too many to write down, but I will, if you need me to. I wasn’t very healthy there, at the end, and I don’t think that I was doing anything good by you, but that doesn’t excuse it. I would like to, another blob of ink and a very long line of text scratched to illegibility, try again? If you’ll let me. If you want to. If you don’t, I understand. I don’t want to –_

The rest was scratched out, but Snape could make out several words, including force and hurt. His heart turned over painfully and sluggishly and he exhaled a long breath.

_Sorry. I’m not sure what else to say. If you want to write to me, I’d love to hear from you. If you don’t, it’s okay. I hope we can at least try to be friends. I don’t know if we ever really were friends, but maybe we could be?_

Here, another blob of ink, smeared as if Harry had tried to blot it away, and then:

_Yours, Harry_

Snape read the letter again, his eyes poring over the words, and he held the parchment up to the light of his window in an effort to see what words had been eliminated from the page, to no great success. He ran his finger over the closing address slowly before he reached for his quill and ink.

* * *

Harry had wavered on going down to the dungeons, since his return to Hogwarts. 

McGonagall had set him up in a relatively small room, which, she explained, had originally been meant for apprentices or graduate students. Hogwarts had apparently used to house far more apprentices in the days before the first wizarding war and still retained some of the quarters for them – four small sets of rooms connected to a common study area and a shared washroom. Harry had chosen the one with the best morning light and one that afforded him a view of the lake. It was a pleasant view first thing in the morning and he hasn't realized how much he missed the smell of the water.

For the most part, he’d been busy since his return and hadn’t had time to explore. Poppy, as she insisted he call her, kept him busy, and even without the students, there was plenty for him to do. Ironically, potions were the first thing she had him studying. It was a critical component to the field of healer and he was vastly lacking in skill, so he ended up spending much of his time re-reading the fundamentals and truly giving it his full attention. 

It helped, of course, that he hoped that Snape would come back one day and that Harry could impress him by everything he had learned. 

He had sent the man a letter nearly two weeks ago, and still no response. He wasn’t sure if McGonagall had heard back from him yet, or if maybe she had and Harry was just the one who wasn’t going to get a response. He’d hardly blame Snape, but still… he hoped.

He hadn’t given himself time to explore, in reality. There were several people at Hogwarts that he was hesitant to run into. Hagrid, Remus, Sirius, and Neville were all working and living in Hogwarts, just as he was, and as much as he had felt ready to come home, he didn’t feel ready to talk to them. It wasn’t going to be easy. A large part of him wanted to just send out a letter to all of them that said, _Look, you betrayed me. I’m not going to forgive you. But can we please stop avoiding one another? It’s getting really awkward. Hogwarts isn’t that big that the five of us can keep not running into each other, on purpose, forever._

Granted, Sirius hasn't betrayed him. Rather the opposite, since Harry had bungled things to the point where Sirius died. Or, was sent to the Boundaries, as it turned out. His godfather had sought him out several times since Harry's return, but it was always awkward and tense. Harry wasn't ready to confront Remus yet and running into him was always a risk if Sirius was around. And besides which, Sirius was… strange. Almost manic in his energy. His teasing was borderline cruel. He seemed to forget, sometimes, that Harry wasn't James. 

Christine acknowledged his reticence in approaching the others. In many respects, he didn’t think he should be the one to seek them out. They should come to him. After all, they were the ones who sent him off to get… to endure what he had endured. Why should he be the bigger person? And Christine agreed that, yes, they should be the ones to come to him, but if they weren’t, and if this was something he felt he needed for himself, then waiting on them was only lending them additional power over him.

She also offered to facilitate discussion between them, to act as a mediator, but Harry wasn’t remotely interested in that. That seemed too diplomatic, too clinical, for everything they had all done to him. No, he could talk to Christine about it afterward, but this was something he felt like he had to do on his own. No outsiders. No witnesses.

He was still putting it off, though. He had spent his morning with Poppy and then the better part of his afternoon with Christine, and was left on his own for the evening, and was feeling completely out of sorts with himself, unable to sit still or study or sleep. He found himself wandering Hogwarts as he had done when he had been a student and, perhaps completely unsurprisingly, his feet led him almost directly down to the dungeons, to where a cobwebbed statue of a small girl sat curled into a recess in the stone walls.

She stared blankly ahead and didn’t react to him when he stopped in front of her. Previously, the statue that had guarded the entrance to Snape’s quarters had seemed almost alive. She would smile at him, or her eyes would follow him, but now, she was quite clearly only a statue. Unmoving, unresponsive, inert. 

“Lueur du jour,” he said and held his breath.

The passage did not open.

Harry slumped and tried to think of what other password Snape might have set. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps the quarters were no longer his. Perhaps he was lingering outside someone else’s rooms, although he couldn’t imagine who else might want their quarters tucked away in that dark, unused dungeon corridor. Slughorn, who was the replacement potions professor and head of Slytherin and who Harry had had the misfortune to meet several times during the last two weeks, had elected to have his quarters somewhere far more accessible. Harry had thus far avoided being shown their supposed grandeur, but he expected it was only a matter of time before he had to pretend to be impressed.

“Could I…” he hesitated in addressing the statue directly, it felt silly, but it was Hogwarts and so it might work. “Could you please let me in? I used to live here. I think I still have some things in there.”

But no, there was no reaction. He was quite literally talking to a wall. 

He sighed and kicked his foot against the floor in disappointment.

“‘Arry?”

He glanced over his shoulder to find a massive dark shadow looming toward him. It filled nearly the entire expanse of the corridor, blocking all light.

He jumped and fumbled his wand from his pocket even as he let out a sharp squeak that he immediately regretted. 

“Oh! Oh! It’s only me,” the voice said and Harry cast a quick lumos and slumped when he found himself face-to-face, or face-to-lower-torso, with Hagrid. 

“Hagrid,” Harry puffed and put a hand to his thumping heart. “You startled me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here in the dungeons.”

“Don’t normally come here, since I only jus’ barely fit.” Hagrid wiggled his fingers into the small space left between his head and the ceiling and then shrugged good naturedly. “Was lookin’ for you.”

Harry sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Oh?”

“I have a letter for yeh that just arrived upstairs, but also,” and Hagrid hesitated and ruffled his big coat over his hunched shoulders. “Also, I wanted t’talk to you, if I could. I wanted to… Oh, Harry, I wanted to – I wanted to apologize for – for –”

And at this, Hagrid’s voice broke and he pulled a large handkerchief from an inner pocket of his coat and blew his nose in an echoing, honking sound. 

“Hagrid…” Harry began, feeling far too ill-prepared to console Hagrid through this moment. How exactly did one tell a friend, _I’m sorry you’re so upset about sending me away to get tortured._

“No, no, I’m makin’ a mess a’this. I told meself I would hold it together, and here I go. Harry, I am so sorry. I don’t know what I can do to make amends to you. Nothin’ could ever be enough. Nothin’.”

Harry sighed again and reached out to lay a hand against Hagrid’s arm. “Let’s go upstairs, out of this hallway. I can only barely see your face and I think we should go somewhere more comfortable.”

Hagrid snuffled into his handkerchief and nodded. “I should go first. Don’t think yeh can get past me right at the moment.”

Harry smiled despite himself and agreed.

He followed Hagrid up through the castle and then outside into the fading light of the day. The sun was setting to the west, over the Forest. Hagrid stopped outside and looked around himself as though unsure where to go next and Harry took pity on him and gestured for them to head down toward the lake.

“How much did you know?” Harry asked after a moment, breaking the quiet. “About what would happen to me? About what Dumbledore planned for me?”

“I…” Hagrid hesitated and looked up at the darkening sky as they walked. “The Headmaster asked me t’keep an eye on you, he did, after I picked you up from yer terrible family. Thought he wanted you t’have a friend, a friendly face, and I was happy to do it. You were so small, then, not like now. Just a brand new wizard with a brand new wand, and all of this was new to you. I thought yeh could use a friend, is all.”

“You were part of his Inner Order, though, weren’t you?”

“Aye, I was,” Hagrid bowed his head. “Th’Headmaster said we were to keep you safe. That you had a destiny. And yeh did, yeh certainly did.”

“You didn’t keep me safe, though, did you?” Harry snapped and saw Hagrid flinch. He tried not to feel guilty for it. “I wasn’t safe. You all _gave me_ to Voldemort. How could I be safe?”

“I _told_ ‘im. There had to be another way, I said, but then he – and I didn’t know if he’d really do it. Wasn’t like him. Wasn’t like him at all, but he _said_ he would and I –”

“Said what? He threatened you, didn’t he?”

Hagrid swallowed and his eyebrows came together thickly over his eyes in confusion and dismay. “Not me. Not ‘xactly. He said my brother was – that Grawp was – Well, he said that he was happy to keep my brother safe, but that Grawp was dangerous and anythin’ could happen. And if so, there weren’t anythin’ he could do to protect him or any of the giants after that. Nothin’,” he finished in a whisper and then cleared his throat. “And Grawp really was dangerous then. Not like he is now. Gentle as a kitten and considerate! I didn’t think the Headmaster would really… I didn’t think he would really set Grawp loose or nothing’ but… There was this look in his eyes, something… something not quite right…”

Harry nodded and exhaled, his breath showing faintly in the evening air. The moon rose over the lake, lighting up the sky, and something large splashed the water. He stopped walking and Hagrid stood near to him, biting his lip and pulling at the lapels of his massive coat.

“I didn’t think he would really do it. He said you needed to,” and Hagrid made a slight choked sound as he finished, “needed to _love_ He-Who–”

“Voldemort.”

Hagrid nodded miserably. “He said you needed to love ‘im. And I didn’t understand what that meant. How could you? How could anyone? I didn’t…” He sucked in a breath. “And then you were gone. Taken. And the Headmaster was so… so pleased, like it was… But it _weren’t_ good. And he wouldn’t let us look for you, not really, not until he sent the Malfoy boy after you to check if… to check if everything was… going to schedule, as he said. It weren’t like him. Not at all. There was something wrong with ‘im. I know there was.”

Harry nodded silently and then shook his head. “There _was_ something wrong with him. He was… Well, he was poisoned, in a way, but really, it was more like he was possessed. Voldemort had found a way into Dumbledore’s mind, through his occlumency defences, and could use it to sometimes control Dumbledore, or just… give him ideas. To see through his eyes.”

Hagrid’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a long moment and then he gasped, “How? How could that happen? For how long? How?”

Harry shook his head again. “I’m not sure, but I think it was around when I was in fourth year, maybe earlier, maybe later. It was a poison, a potion, an old potion that… I’m not really sure how it worked. But yes, the Headmaster wasn’t exactly himself. I think a lot of what he did, the decisions he made, I think that was at least partially Voldemort.”

“He wasn’t himself, I could tell!” Hagrid cried and wrung his hands together. His expression was pinched and distraught and tears poured down his cheeks, disappearing into his beard. “Not at all himself, and I saw it and I did nothin’ at all to help him! To help anyone. All of it, I could see somethin’ was wrong and I didn’t stop none of it. It’s my fault! I should be sent back to Azkaban. I don’t deserve none of this,” Hagrid gestured out at the picturesque scene with a wide, frantic sweep of his arm. “None of this.”

“Hagrid,” Harry hesitated and then reached out and grabbed a handful of Hagrid’s sleeve. “Hagrid, it wasn’t your fault. What happened to me, what happened to the Headmaster, it wasn’t your fault. I…” Harry sucked in a deep, painful breath and then said, “Hagrid, I forgive you. It wasn’t your fault. Voldemort did all of it. All of it. It isn’t your fault.”

Hagrid gasped a hacking breath through his tears and seemed to crumple down around himself. He shook with desperate breaths, and Harry leaned down into him, wrapping his arms as far around his bulk as he could.

“It’s not your fault. And it’s not my fault either.”

Hagrid gasped and snuffled sharply through his tears. “ _Yer_ fault? None of this is _yer_ fault. Yer the victim of – of – of all of it. Of so much!”

“So are you,” Harry said quietly. “Voldemort… He wanted to watch us all burn. He wanted us to hurt each other so he could enjoy the show. He was…” and Harry allowed himself a small, twisted smile. “He wasn’t a good man.”

“No, don’t suppose he was,” Hagrid blew his nose into his ruined handkerchief and patted at his coat for another, but found something else instead. He brought out a roll of bound parchment with a puzzled look until his face cleared and he said, “Oh! This is yer letter. It got a bit squashed.”

Harry bit his lip and reached out to take it. It was covered in waxed leather and bound by a thick, rough strip of dark red fabric.

Hagrid twisted his handkerchief between his hands as he looked down at Harry, who slipped the letter into the back pocket of his jeans. He hesitated, uncertainty twisting in his stomach, and then he offered Hagrid a small, tenuous smile and held out both his arms as widely as he could. Hagrid gasped and lunged forward, wrapping Harry up in thick arms and a warm, wooly coat, and Harry closed his eyes and sank into it, breathing in the old, familiar half-wild scent of his first friend.

* * *

It wasn’t until he was back in his rooms that he thought to open and read the letter. He didn’t recognize the binding of it and knew it wasn’t either Hermione or Ron, who were more likely to firecall him than to send him a letter, and Harry couldn’t think of anyone else who might send him a letter wrapped in waxed leather. It looked a bit worse for wear. Perhaps it was yet another inquiry from a reporter who wanted an exclusive on his return to Hogwarts. Someone from Ireland this time, most likely, as it had clearly traveled across open water.

He slipped off the ribbon and unwrapped the leather from around the parchment and unrolled it far enough to see, _Dear Harry,_ in the familiar tight handwriting, with its precise edges and sharp curves, and he felt his breath catch in his chest, his pulse thudding painfully in his throat and in his fingertips.

He sank down into his desk chair and unrolled the rest of the letter with shaking hands.

_Dear Harry, Thank you for your letter. I was glad to receive it. I did indeed travel to China. Or, more accurately, I am in Tibet, in residence at a school of wizardry run by a friend who quite generously extended me an invitation some years ago and which I accepted. I have been granted a modest home here and please be assured that I am still brewing, although I have taken something of a break from the invention of potions._

Harry’s breath caught at the clean lines and the careful tone. His own letter had been a terrible mess. 

_I appreciate your apology, but please, do not feel that you are required to enumerate any of your perceived faults. As you say, you were in quite serious pain, which I completely understand. I do wish that we had been able to heal our wounds together, but I also understand the need to distance oneself and heal on one’s own time and terms. Until you, I must confess, I had not allowed myself the time to heal from many of my past hurts and preferred to coddle those scars and wounds as though they were old friends, which they most assuredly were not. I have made great strides, and in no small part because of my change in venue, to do just that over these last months. Perhaps the distance was, in the end, of some benefit to the both of us. I have been informed by Minerva that you are looking well since your return and are only partially disfigured._

Harry startled at that, having once again forgotten completely about his eyebrow piercing. His hand flew up to touch it and his breath caught in his throat as he wondered if disfigured was McGonagall’s word for it or Severus’s.

_Minerva informed me also that you spent your time away in Canada. Did you find it as quaint and wholesome as its reputation?_

_I will not be able to travel for some time and so, yes, an exchange of correspondence would be most welcome in the interim._

_Yours, Severus_

_PS. I have been informed you will be pursuing the field of Healer and I feel pressed to tell you that that was, at one point in time, your mother’s intended field as well. She would be proud of you, I’m sure._

Harry held the letter with shaking hands and read it through again. It was more than he could have hoped for. More than he deserved. His eyes fixated on the signature and he tried not to overthink it. It was how he had closed his letter as well. Maybe Severus was only replicating the same farewell. It didn’t have to mean anything. He had meant it, but it didn’t _have_ to mean anything. 

He read through the letter once again, and then he fumbled blindly across his desk for his quill and a fresh roll of parchment.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Shows up a month late with my chapter and a depressive episode in hand._
> 
> Weird that a pandemic, global civil protests due to widespread systemic racism, and a particular British writer saying things she really ought not to think much less say could trigger my anxiety and depression, but here we are. Thank you all for your patience.
> 
> For those who need to hear it: Black lives matter. Black trans lives matter. Trans women and trans men are who they say they are. Non-binary people are valid. And these are hills I am prepared to die on.

Ophidia hooked her finger into his right nostril and dug one of her ever lengthening fingernails into his skin as she tried to pull him closer. He had been feeding her a bottle up until Belladonna had woken from a dead sleep, noticed that her sister was getting attention that rightfully belonged to herself, and had screeched with a piercing intensity that would put a banshee to shame. He had then put the bottle down to deal with that particular uprising, which, as far as Ophidia was concerned, was akin to criminal action and beyond forgiveness.

He tried to pull her finger from his nose, but she had dug her sharp nail in to such a degree, he felt as if he might as well be a prize-winning trout. Belladonna screamed and Ophidia screamed back, pulling insistently at his face. Her other hand came up and scratched along his cheek as she batted at him in uncoordinated frustration. 

“Bells, I’m –” Ophida shoved her hand into his mouth and he spat it out. “Stop! Would you –” But as she did not yet understand speech, she stuck her hand into his open mouth again and grabbed his lip with her claws, yanking him closer, all the while screaming her outrage directly into his face.

Belladonna thrashed in her cot, her face red and her heels kicking hard, and the cot rattled against the floor ominously.

They had slept so well for the first month, curling toward one another like apostrophes for hours and hours at a time. They had slept through the night almost immediately and they had, for the most part, fallen asleep at the same time and woken up at the same time, as if they were on a single, shared internal timer, and what a relief that had been. Belladonna had screamed, yes, but she had slept in equal measures. He had been lulled into a false sense of complacency and it had left him with an overpowering sense of superiority. He was, clearly, a better parent than all others. Why did people think babies were difficult, when it was so clearly very easy? Why had Qingling warned him that twins were all the more exhausting and repeatedly told him that he should not be shy about seeking help whenever he needed it? They had hardly been exhausting at all. They had eaten, they had slept, they had stared at him with star-struck wonder and adoration – they were clearly the best children on the planet and he, the best parent.

But then the twins’ second month had rolled over, and they seemed to have mutually decided that they hated one another and were in a bitter competition over his time, attention and affection. If he held one, the other cried. If he fed one, the other screamed. If he put them to sleep, they pushed at one another and fussed until he finally thought to separate them by a bolster pillow, but then Belladonna had figured out how to circumvent the bolster – had, in fact, pushed the rounded pillow until it had rolled over Ophidia and half smothered her.

Attempted murder was not something he had foreseen. 

He had tried to put one twin in the cot and the other down on his own bed as he napped, but the one who slept separate from them screamed and cried. He had then tried to lay on his back on the bed, one twin curled against each of his sides, but then he could not sleep, worried he would roll and crush them, that he would wake to two dead, blank-eyed infants in his bed, a nightmare he would sometimes have even when completely awake, and so he was left staring up at his dark ceiling with eyes that felt like sand as his children slept, as they pretended to be angels when he knew them to be demons.

Other parents did this, he had told himself over his last sleepless night. Other parents managed to get their children out of infancy. Other parents managed to sleep. They must. Unless every parent was also adrift in a fog, useless and slowly losing sanity, as their brain atrophied from lack of sleep and the constant sound of piercing screaming. How had his mother done this? His father certainly couldn’t have been much of a support in his own infancy. Unless, perhaps, he had been, but this endless slog of noise and lack of sleep had been the very thing to push him over the edge into alcoholism and anger. Child-Severus had learned to sleep at some point. He knew it. He had slept once. For all that insomnia had plagued him over his lifetime, he could still remember sleeping.

He was tempted to put them each in a separate soundless bubble and let them cry as he slept, or perhaps, he could drug them with a sleep draught. Or he could drug himself. Someone needed to be drugged, that much was clear.

And now, he had Ophidia who wanted more food, always wanted more and more food – she was an endless pit of hunger – and Belladonna who wanted… what? Sleep? Attention? Was she also hungry? Did she need to be changed? Was she too hot? Too cold? Was she overwhelmed by her inability to express herself coherently? He knew he was.

He hadn’t slept in what felt like a week. Or two. Time had lost all meaning. He hadn’t gone to get himself food the day before, having had no time at all when the twins were not screaming and fussing and taking up all of his attention, and today, he found himself looking at the bottle of formula questioningly.

He felt thin, stretched like muslin cloth, permeable, insubstantial. The only thing holding him together was the need to keep two entire human beings alive and he felt quite certain that he was failing at that. It wasn’t right to wish them gone, if only for a night – to wish them out of existence so he could get some peace and quiet. Some sleep. He was supposed to love them. He wanted to love them. He _did_ love them. But by Merlin’s Beard, he was so very, very, very tired.

He put Ophidia down on the bed and she screamed as he let go, her hands coming up toward him as she tried to claw her way back into his arms. Belladonna screamed back at her sister from the cot where she had slept, for all of twenty minutes, and their cries echoed about in the small space. He took a single step back from them, closed his eyes and sucked in a deep, filling breath before letting it out just as slowly. He did this again. And then once more. The pounding in his head abated, no matter that the deafening cries continued. 

Snape opened his eyes.

“Alright,” he said, and then bent to scoop Ophidia back into his arms. He shuffled her, despite her grasping hands, into the crook of his left arm and then levitated Belladonna from her cot and hooked her under his right arm. They both screamed and clawed at one another, and he took another deep breath and left his room.

He walked down the path to the gardens where he found both Qingling and Nian Zhēn as they released the few students who took their joint class on the growth methods for speciality potions ingredients. Snape hesitated a moment, having completely forgotten about the world outside his small room and his children – that people were still teaching, learning – it felt alien and forgotten, a life he had once lived. The twins had stopped crying the moment he had taken them outside, too distracted to continue to hate one another.

Nian Zhēn noticed him first and smiled widely, taking in the two children in the sweep of his eyes and smile.

“Ah! Severus! Taking in the sunshine, are you?”

Qingling turned at this and Snape could see as her gaze immediately took in everything in one fell swoop. She rolled her eyes skyward and said, “You complete idiot,” before she came forward and took Belladonna from his arm. “I told you, didn’t I? Didn’t I say to ask for help? I’m almost certain I said it.”

“You did,” Snape confirmed. “And yes, I am a complete idiot. Take her. Take both.”

Nian Zhēn slid forward and took Ophidia without further prompting and tickled at her cleft chin. She kicked out her feet playfully, as sweet as sugar, and Snape cast her a baleful look.

“Go on,” Qingling said in a gentle voice and she smiled down at Belladonna as the girl took the older woman’s gnarled finger in her own tiny hand. She lifted her gaze again and lifted an eyebrow. “Go take a bath. Go get some sleep. Eat something, for goodness’ sake. You look like you’re about one strong gust away from blowing away.”

“You do look tired, my friend,” Nian Zhēn agreed. “You have been keeping too much to yourself, and what a shame too! What lovely little ones. You've kept them all to yourself when we were waiting and hoping to have snuggles as well. We haven’t had babies here in years.” He tickled Ophidia again and she gave what appeared to be her first true smile and Snape had to fight the instinct to snatch her back from his friend, to take that smile for himself, but then an unfortunate sound happened and Nian Zhēn’s face took on a mixed expression.

“Oh, I believe someone just made a stinky in her tiny pants!”

Qingling rolled her eyes again. “Go on already. You can have them back tomorrow. Maybe. We'll see, string bean. We might just keep them for ourselves.”

“Thank you,” he told her, in as heartfelt a tone as he could muster. 

He bent and kissed each infant’s head in succession, gave them strict orders to be good, and then went back to his room, where he fell in the bed fully dressed and only woke much later, with the sky darkening, when an owl landed at the head of his bed and dropped a letter on his face.

It glared at him when he did not immediately offer it a treat, hissed, and took off, and Snape blinked around his blessedly quiet room and at the darkening sky as he tried to place himself more firmly in the moment.

The cot was empty. The room was silent. His heart beat furiously, and it took him an unfortunately long moment to remember that he had left his children with Qingling and Nian Zhēn. That they were safe.

He tried desperately to tamp down on the sudden pang of razor sharp worry in his chest. His friends would take care of the two infants, he was certain. He hoped. He wasn’t a bad parent to need a moment to himself. He wasn’t a failure for being unable to cope for an evening. There wasn’t something wrong with him that he could not figure out how to handle the gifts he had been given.

He did feel better for having slept, though. He should go find something to eat as well.

Snape picked up the letter which had fallen on his face, and he could immediately identify that it was not from Minerva, and he would be surprised if it were as he had received a letter from her earlier that very week. He unfurled the parchment with a very different pang in his chest, which intensified when he recognized the messy scrawls. The lines were tidier this time, as if Harry had put some effort into making the letter neater than what he typically produced. There were still a few sections that had been crossed out, as Harry had clearly still not learned the value of a first and second draft, but he was loath to mention it. There was much to be gleaned from the sloppily crossed out words.

_Dear Severus,_

_I’m so glad to hear you are doing well._ Snape snorted, but allowed it. It was hard to argue when Harry wasn’t there to see the truth of the matter. _I’m glad you’re safe and happy. I didn’t know you had left Hogwarts until a few months ago, and I’ve been worried for you ever since. McGonagall let me know you were safe when I got back here, but I’m glad to hear it directly from you. ~~I miss you.~~ I miss you._

_What is Tibet like? Are there mountains? Is it very cold? I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. I should see if I can find a book in the library. Any recommendations?_

_It is very strange to be back here at Hogwarts, ~~especially since the last time I was here, I died. You almost died. You –~~ So much is different, but also the same, and I’m not sure what to think about it. There is still too much evidence that a battle happened here. Parts of the castle are still under repair. The North Tower is mostly gone and the rest of it is closed up while the repairs happen. There are chunks of the tower out in the field. ~~It’s –~~ I don’t like it._

_Besides that, it’s strange being back, knowing I’m surrounded by people who betrayed me. Did you know about Dumbledore’s Inner Order? ~~It would be just my luck if you were somehow part of it, but I can’t imagine how you could have been.~~ I spoke to Hagrid tonight. It seemed like Dumbledore was blackmailing at least some of the people in his secret little group and Hagrid was one of them, and Hagrid says he didn’t know what was really happening until I was taken by Voldemort. He said that Dumbledore told him the group was meant to keep me safe. ~~And they did such a good job of it, too.~~_

_I forgave Hagrid, but I don’t think I want to forgive anyone else. I’m not sure I can. Maybe eventually. Neville and Remus are here teaching and they were part of it too and I just… I’ve been avoiding them. I don’t want to talk to them. I don’t want to hear what Dumbledore did to them to make them do what they did. How could it be close to the price I had to pay? I don’t want to forgive them. I trusted them._

_Sirius is here too but wasn’t part of Dumbledore’s group. He was still… dead? Gone? I don’t know. So technically, I should be okay with him, but I’m not. He’s different. Different than he was when I knew him, anyway, but similar to how he was in your memories? He makes these jokes – they aren’t funny. He doesn’t seem to get what we all went through. He doesn’t seem to understand that there are consequences to doing stupid things. And he doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t just forget what I went through and why I can’t find his stupid jokes and stupid pranks funny. He sometimes calls me James and gets disappointed when I’m not him. Was he like this back then? He’s so… I’m not sure how to put it. I mean, he had bad things happen in his family, didn’t he? They disowned him? I don’t know the whole story, but even if he can’t remember everything from Azkaban, surely he can still remember the things from before? That bad things happen to other people too? It’s like he doesn’t care._

Snape frowned at this. He had already heard from Minerva about Sirius, but this confirmation made him wonder. What had the Boundaries done to the man? Granger had been there as well, although not for the same length. What effects had it had on her? On the Longbottoms? He wondered if someone was making a study of it. It wasn’t his field, but it was curious.

_I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to hear about any of this. Not about Sirius, anyway. I should be talking to my therapist about this, not unloading to you. I’m glad I can write to you, but I don’t want to put you off._

_Oh, you asked about Canada. It wasn’t particularly wholesome in my experience, but that might just be the circles I put myself in. I did meet some nice people, but also some not so nice? Mostly nice, I’d say. I spent the entire time in Montreal, though, so I imagine things are different elsewhere in the country._

_I already asked you what Tibet is like, but how is the school you’re at? Is it a very big school? How are the people? I know you’re not one to be very social, but I hope you’ve made a friend or two. Someone to look after you. Someone to make sure you eat. I know you’re the independent type, but it’s nice to have someone to take care of you from time to time, I’ve learned._

Snape’s stomach rumbled at the idea of food and he offered it a chagrined promise of a meal.

_I hope to hear from you again soon,_

_Yours, Harry_

Snape rolled the parchment again and slid it into the pocket of his tunic. He would re-read it over his evening meal, he decided, and then he would sleep again. And in the morning, he would indulge in a bath. Perhaps read the letter again and then draft a response. He would take the morning to himself, he decided, since, as it turned out, he had a community around him who were willing to help him, who wanted to help him. 

They did not think him a failure for needing the help, but instead, thought him selfish for keeping his burdens to himself.

It was a novel concept, but perhaps worth pursuing.

* * *

Harry straightened the linens on yet another pristine infirmary bed as he made a round of the room. It was his first time being left to oversee the infirmary on his own, and, as he puttered about in the airy room, he had the fervent hope that if anyone did show up, it was something he could handle.

He knew the basics of first aid and had shadowed Poppy for the last month as she treated the unfortunate variety of ailments the students at Hogwarts encountered. He also knew, from his own experiences, what potions to use for certain conditions – he knew to use Skele-Gro for missing bones, for instance – but had only recently learned that if you tried to use Skele-Gro on damaged bones without a specific spell to direct the magic, you risked growing a new set of bones that then fought for space with the existing broken ones. Not pleasant for anyone involved.

Thankfully, classes and final exams had finished only the week before, so at least the students had all gone home, which cut down on any likely emergencies, but all the professors were still in residence as they finished marking and tallying grades. Granted, many stayed at Hogwarts year-round or nearly so, like McGonagall, Hagrid and Filch, as well as the resident ghosts, including Binns (who taught his classes all summer to an empty room) and now Trelawney. Dumbledore and Severus had been numbered among the permanent residents as well, in years past.

Harry had always wanted to stay in Hogwarts over summer holidays instead of having to go back to the Dursleys, and now he was to do just that. It was a double-edged sword, though. Some professors, Poppy, for instance, went home to their families and came back for a day or two in the summer to handle upkeep. Professor Sprout had done that, and now, it seemed, Neville Longbottom was to follow in her same footsteps. It made for a fraught landscape, as he was still trying to avoid his former friend.

As far as he knew, although he certainly hadn’t inquired directly, Sirius and Remus were supposed to clear out soon, perhaps even over the next few days, so Harry was looking forward to delaying any necessary confrontations with them, hopefully all summer, and he was strongly hoping he could continue to avoid Neville as well. His talk with Hagrid had been difficult enough, and Hagrid had been so very clearly misled and abused, Harry couldn’t help but have forgiven him. It was clear that Hagrid had been led blind into Dumbledore’s plan, but, in all honesty, Harry couldn’t have done anything else but forgive Hagrid. The giant, despite his size, seemed so naive and innocent, and it felt like punishing a child for someone else’s crimes. 

He and Hagrid had a long road ahead of them, though – Hagrid still apologized constantly when he was with Harry, and Harry had finally had to tell him to stop. It put him in the uneasy position of explaining to his friend that every apology was yet another sharp reminder of the events. It brought him right back to that room, blind and bound and helpless, and he was making efforts to recover from those events and memories, but too many reminders could truly ruin him for the day, if not the week. 

Harry had absolutely no desire to go over it all again with anyone else. He didn’t want to hear what Dumbledore had done to Neville. He didn’t want to hear what had been held over Remus to make him do what he had done. He didn’t want to hear more sob stories. Protecting all giantkind, Harry could almost understand that, but was the need to protect Remus’ werewolf side worth what Harry had been forced to endure? Was Neville’s grandmother truly worth Harry’s life, his mindless parents? What else could Dumbledore have held over those two? 

Was there no one who would choose Harry over their own self-protection? Had Harry been worth anything to anyone alive rather than dead? 

Harry puffed out a hard breath and left the beds alone and went over to the windows to peer out at the field. Everything was calm now that the students were gone, but Harry could remember the other day when he’d gone for a walk across the grounds and had immediately regretted it. Hogwarts was full of hidden memories, hidden triggers, and they caught Harry unawares at the most innocuous of times. Students had been sitting on the remains of the North Tower, chatting and laughing, as if the chunks of castle walls were benches and not gravestones. A third year student had had his leg crushed by the falling tower. His leg might even still be under the largest of the stones – from what Harry understood, they’d had to cut his body free in the heat of the battle and no one had yet moved the fallen wall, so it stood to reason that the chatting, happy students had all sat laughing over _bits_ one of their fellow students.

It had thrown Harry into a rage, his vision going dark and red, his mind blank save for his fury. He’d yelled at the students and chased them off, screaming at their blindness, at their ignorance, at their happiness. He couldn’t imagine he’d been coherent in his anger, so they had likely just seen a poor, broken Harry Potter, frothing at the mouth and screaming nonsense – exactly as the Prophet was portraying him. Ron and Hermione wanted him to file charges of libel against the paper, but Harry knew that Rita wasn’t too far off in her review of his mental health. He was doing better, but there was enough at Hogwarts to remind him, to set him off. He and Christine were working on it, but he wasn’t there yet. He might never be, but he was determined to reclaim Hogwarts for himself. It had always been his home, his safety. He wanted it to be home and safety again.

Harry startled away from the window when the infirmary door opened inwards. He spun rather dramatically on his heels and almost toppled a chair in his urgency to prove that he could handle whatever was incoming – or to prove to Poppy that he wasn’t wasting time daydreaming if she’d come back from her meeting early.

Neville came in, holding his left hand aloft and dripping blood down his arm. He had bound his hand in a thick cloth, which was now soaked through. He stuttered to a stop as he caught sight of Harry, and for an uneasy moment, they stared at one another warily before Harry shook himself all over as he reminded himself of his job.

“What happened?”

Neville grimaced. “I was an idiot. I was cleaning out the damage from Greenhouse Seven. Nothing had really been done with it all year, you know, and I thought… well, I should have taken better precautions.” He looked at his bloody hand and winced. “There was a fanged geranium that had somehow survived all year with no care. I have no idea what it might have been eating, but it was huge. Nearly took my whole arm, the hungry bugger, but managed to just rip through my hand, which was bad enough.”

“You couldn’t stop the bleeding?”

“Couldn’t, no,” Neville shook his head. “The bloody thing ate my wand.”

“Ouch.” Harry winced in sympathy. “Okay, let’s get you over to a bed and we’ll see what we have.”

Harry unwound the cloth from around Neville’s hand and grimaced at the destruction he found. It was a mess of blood and tissue, and glimpses of white bone and silvery tendons showed through the bright blood. 

Neville looked a bit pale as he said, “It really did get a good chomp in.”

“Clearly,” Harry replied even as he held out a hand and wordlessly summoned a calming draught. It hit his hand and he removed the stopper. “Drink.”

Neville nodded. He moved his damaged hand in an aborted motion before he switched to his right hand and awkwardly took the small flask and drank from it. “Can you handle this? I imagine Pomfrey is at that Director’s meeting with McGonagall?”

“It looks messy, but this shouldn’t be hard to fix. Let me just clean it up so I can see how bad it is.” He cast _Tergeo_ to clean up the blood and took a better look at the wound. The carnivorous plant had clearly ripped a chunk of the meat of Neville’s hand away, but the bones and tendons were all intact. “Mm, I can fix this, yes. It’s not that bad. Let that calming draught sink in, and I’ll go get what I need.”

Neville nodded, eyes fixed on his hand and he nodded sharply when Harry warned him, “Don’t move.”

Harry collected several vials of wound-cleaning potion and some clean bandages and then returned to Neville’s side.

“Okay, hold still,” he offered Neville his most reassuring smile and then poured the first of the potions over the wound. It smoked and sizzled and Neville sucked in a sharp, whistling breath through his teeth. Harry lifted an eyebrow as he held up the second potion and Neville gave a tight nod before Harry repeated the same action. The second potion sizzled considerably less, which Harry knew was a good sign. He cast a series of healing spells over the now-clean wound and they both watched as the muscle and skin knit themselves closed. 

“Give it a flex for me,” Harry asked and Neville gently moved his fingers at first before closing his hand into a fist and opening again. The skin was pink and new, but everything moved properly.

Harry wrapped the bandages around Neville’s hand. “Keep it dry and try not to use your hand for anything more strenuous than scratching your nose for at least two days. If you need a wank, you’ll need to use your other hand or find help first. And bubble charm it before you take a bath.”

“Thanks,” Neville said slowly as Harry began to collect the empty vials and spell out the blood. He nibbled at his lip hesitantly and he gave Harry a tentative glance, his eyes wide and hopeful. 

Harry felt his stomach clench down on a sudden spike of unease, but he made his mouth turn up into as cocky a grin as he could muster. “That help I mentioned? You’ll need to find someone other than me.”

Neville blushed a furious pink and shook his head. “No, no, I've got – I mean… I know. That’s not what I – Oh hell.” He slid from the bed, dragging the sheets with him, and Harry turned away, his hands tightening on his handful of vials and he took several long steps to try to put as much distance between the two of them as possible, but he gritted his teeth as he heard Neville jog to catch up.

“Harry, I –”

“Nope,” Harry cut him off as he slammed the vials down harder than he should. They didn’t crack. They were unbreakable. “I don’t want to talk about it, Neville.”

“But Harry, I want to apologize to you. I wanted to tell you before. I’ve been meaning to come and talk to you, because… because I need to tell you –”

Harry clenched his hands into fists on the white stone tabletop. He kept his back to Neville. His body was as tight as a coiled snake and he could feel Neville’s hesitance and desperation all the way down his spine, grasping and slippery, like eels.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Neville. I don’t want your apologies.”

“But… But Harry…”

He tightened his fists further and he spun on his heel. Neville was closer than he should be and, as Harry turned to face him and Neville caught sight of his expression, he backed up two uncertain steps and held up his newly healed hand warily.

“Dumbledore forced me, Harry. He –”

“I don’t care. I _don’t care!_ Unless what he forced on you was anything like what was forced on me, I don’t want to hear it.” 

Harry took a step forward, his fists at his sides, his magic vibrating just under his skin. One of the vials on the table crashed down to the floor. Neville took another step back, his eyes wide.

“Do you know how many people had their hands on me? Do you know how many people were _in_ me? All over me? In my skin, down my throat, up my arse, in my fucking blood? Do you know? Did you get kept up to date? Did they keep a record? Did you _know?”_

“I,” Neville shook his head. “Not at first, no, but eventually, yes. Draco, he…”

“Told you? Told you what he saw?” Harry's mouth twisted into a bitter smile, all teeth and no light. “How he found me naked and chained and ready to take his dick however he wanted to give it to me? Because if I didn’t, if I didn’t take what was given to me, then Voldemort wouldn’t stroke my fucking hair afterward? Did he tell you that? Neville, did you know how much I wanted him to stroke my hair? I’d take anything – I’d let them cut my skin off, just so he would hold me and kiss my forehead and tuck me in, right there on that freezing floor. And I’d do it all over again the next day. I’d do it over and over and fucking over again, just so I could think I’d _pleased_ him. Did you know, Neville? How much I wanted to please him?”

Tears slid down Neville’s cheeks and he shook his head wordlessly.

“I imagine it was your grandmother that Dumbledore threatened. Besides your toad, what else did you have to lose? You’d already lost your parents, hadn’t you?” Harry's breath caught in his throat and he took in a deep breath as he loosened his fists and let his hands dangle at his sides. He had gone too far, a voice in his head told him, sounding very much like Alexandre, but he pushed it back and raised his eyes to look Neville in the eye as he finished, “But you got them back, didn’t you? You must be so happy.”

Tears continued to slide down Neville’s face, and Harry pointed his hand toward the door and said, “Take care of that hand. Don’t want you to have to come back here any time soon.”

Neville stood still for a long moment. He opened his mouth, but then clearly thought better of it and closed it again. His shoulders slumped and he gave a small, dejected nod before he left the infirmary.

After the door had closed again, Harry went and changed the sheets on the bed and made it with crisp corners and smooth lines. He then sat down on the floor, put his head in his hands and sat there until Poppy returned.

* * *

“No, no,” Qingling said as Snape made a move to hand her one of the infants. “Not that one. I want the angry one. She’s my favourite.”

“You’re not supposed to have a favourite,” Snape told her as he passed her Belladonna instead. He sat down and set Ophidia upright on his leg, holding her back against his torso so she could do her preferred activity – observe.

_“You’re_ not supposed to have a favourite, but I can and I like the angry one. That one is judging me. I can tell.”

Snape rolled his eyes. “Ophidia is only just ten weeks of age. What could she judge you over?”

“Anything, everything. Too quiet, too watchful. Unnatural is what she is.”

Snape turned his head to stare down Qingling, his gaze sharp and furious.

“Do not refer to my child as unnatural again, you harpy,” he snapped and cuddled Ophidia closer to himself. She made an unhappy noise and flailed her arms in a feeble attempt at freedom before he relented and loosened his grip. She babbled a wet sound and smacked his forearm soundly and her sister babbled something back at her from her perch on Qingling’s knee. “She is how she is and there is no shame in that. If you insist on ridiculing an infant for who she is, I will send your mother an owl and let her know just how badly her own child has turned out.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I didn’t mean anything by it. She’s a strange one, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re a strange one too, but that doesn’t stop me from liking you well enough, as it’s turned out. I just like the angry one more. She’s got a fire in her.”

“You like her best because she happens to remind you of the only person you’d voluntarily devote your time to.”

“I’m hardly going to take offence at being my own favourite person,” she sniffed loudly and deliberately turned her attention back to the infant on her lap. She bounced Belladonna, who turned to look at her and confided something incoherent as she waved her wooden toy ring about in the air. “I worked hard to get to this place in my life and I’m not going to rescind it just for one pale, underfed British man. You would do well to be your own favourite person as well, string bean. Your life would be extremely empty if you were not in it, you should remember.”

Snape tilted his head in acknowledgement. “There have been times in my life when emptiness would have been preferable, but I think those times are behind me now.” 

Belladonna held out her wooden toy to him and he smiled at the offer and reached out to hook his finger through it. She tugged, her eyes wide, until he released his slight hold on it and she took it back, looking it over as if she could not fathom why it had been unmoveable for a moment. Snape smiled at the look of consternation on her small, round face.

“Mm, it’s time to start to like yourself, I think. These little ones do. We here all tolerate you well enough, and I expect you have others who miss you as well. You’ve certainly been getting enough mail lately.” Qingling looked over his shoulder and smirked widely. “Speak of the devil, there’s another one now.”

Snape turned his head to see a large owl swoop down over him and drop a letter into his lap before it flew off. The letter bounced against Ophidia’s leg and she gave it a small, banshee-like screech for its gall. Belladonna babbled something and Ophidia kicked the letter to the ground as she continued to explain to her sister how forward the letter had been with her person.

He bent to pick it up and was surprised to see it wrapped by a tartan ribbon. It had only been a little over a week since Minerva’s last letter and it was extremely unlikely, even if his owl had been particularly speedy, that she had received his response to her. He unwrapped the letter, gave the ribbon a quick, wordless cleaning charm, and then handed it to Ophidia, who immediately took it in a fist and jammed it into her mouth.

“What’s she got to say this time?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” he answered as he glanced over the parchment. After a moment of skimming the words, he sighed heavily and dropped his hand to his lap, the letter still in hand, and Ophidia kicked at it again as it brushed her leg.

“She’s asking if I intend to return again. Both her potions and defence professors are not working out, and, if you recall, she had hinted that she’d like me to come back to one of those positions and I have been hesitant to make a decision on it. Well, Minerva has apparently had quite enough of hinting and is now insisting on a clear response from me.”

“You can hardly blame her. She has all of two months left to find replacements before the next year begins, and I can tell you that finding a good teacher on such short notice is nothing to sniff at. You should give her an answer, either for or against.”

Snape sighed again and shook his head slowly. “I know it’s been unfair of me to hesitate, but I’m honestly unsure what I want to do. I don’t want to move these two so soon, and I’ve been… well, I’ve been content here,” he glanced at Qingling suspiciously as if she might give some comment to that, but she held her tongue. “But then again, that is my home and Minerva is my friend, and I think I always did intend to go back eventually. Perhaps not so soon, however. There are a lot of unpleasant memories attached to my home that I’d rather not confront again.”

“There’s that young man, though, isn’t there?”

He glared at her. “I should never have told you about him.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You were mooning over his letter like a lovesick calf. It was hard to miss. I hardly had to pry the information out of you – you were bursting to talk about him, if you recall. You’re so sweet on him, I nearly had to contact a healer to fix the rot in my teeth.”

“What teeth you have left,” he muttered and Qingling glared at him.

“I have _all_ of my teeth, thank you. Don’t change the subject. You want to go back to see that young man. He’s the father of these little ones, isn’t he?”

Snape gave a small nod and Qingling glared at him some more.

“And I’ll bet you haven’t told him about any of this. It’s not right to keep them from him. They’re his children too.”

“He’s eighteen and he’s suffered a trauma few could imagine. He does not need an additional burden placed upon him. These,” he nodded to the babies, who babbled on unawares, “are beautiful and I do not regret them, but they are the result of a series of very ill-thought decisions on my part, and the consequences of those decisions are mine and mine alone.”

“Idiot man. I think he deserves to make that decision on his own – he’s of age, no matter how much of a cradle robber you think yourself. My last flame was fifty years my junior, although he was at least older than twenty. I take it that you won’t be returning to that school of yours after all?”

Snape hesitated and gave a heavy sigh that ruffled the wispy hair at the nape of Ophidia’s neck. She turned to peer at him questioningly, a suspicious crinkle along her forehead. He stroked the crown of her head and she held up the ribbon in an offering. Her hair was still too short for ribbons though, and he doubted that was what she had in mind – when he reached for the ribbon, she yanked it back and babbled warningly at him while she looked over at Qingling as if the older woman might commiserate on the presumption of men, which she certainly would.

He had always suspected that this haven in the mountains would not be his permanent home. It was a refuge, a place to heal, but it was also rather too peaceful to occupy him, he had discovered with some chagrin. He had all the time in the world to brew, to study, to invent, save for the infants of course, but he also found he had little in the way of drive or inspiration. 

Many of his inventions, his interests, had been inspired by a pressing need, either his own or that of another. The wolfsbane was driven by his desire to save others from the terror he had experienced. His potion for Harry, for all that it had backfired spectacularly, was driven by the need to protect. His work on the Draught of Living Dead, inspired by the war. His work on the multitude of healing potions the Hogwarts infirmary had required, inspired by the countless injuries sustained by idiotic students. 

He saw how Qingling used the limitations and hardships of her location to invent new ways to protect her crops, how she worked to breed the plants to be heartier and more potent so as to counteract the short growing season. He could see how Niàn Zhēn was inspired by the calmness of his surroundings to invent and perfect potions of sleep and relaxation, potions of healing that worked on the mind as well as the body. But none of this, Snape knew, was enough to hold him. It was a lovely place to rest, to heal, to grow, but hardly offered him the challenge he needed to thrive.

Snape glanced down at Ophidia’s downy head and allowed himself a soft smile as he swept his hand through her hair again. Perhaps the mountain school would be a peaceful place to raise his children, to see them grow and become happy, well-adjusted people, but he had seen what boredom and frustration had done to his parents and he couldn’t see himself doing his best as a father if he wasn’t happy himself. And, he acknowledged as he looked over at Belladonna who was in the throes of an angry tirade to Qingling, perhaps they would end up equally bored of the peace as well.

“I think I will return.”

Qingling lifted her head and peered at him, narrowing her eyes. “You change your mind more often than my niece does choosing a dress to wear, you know that?”

“I won’t miss you one bit, you old harpy.”

“Mmm, I’m sure. We won’t miss you either, string bean.”

His lips turned up into a slip of a smile and Qingling’s eyes crinkled in return.

Belladonna held up her wooden ring and shrieked as she flailed it about, narrowly missing Qingling’s cheek, and Ophidia gave her own delighted scream as she held up her ribbon in triumphant response.

Snape shook his head. “I hardly think Hogwarts is ready for these two banshees, but I suppose we shall see.’

Minerva was going to have words with him, he just knew. Extremely strong words.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite all odds, I have written a chapter. Go me!
> 
> I hope you're all doing as well as can be. <3

Harry had set himself under a tree by the lake to study for his first Healer level, which Poppy and two other healers were supposed to give to him later that week. He had several books surrounding him, books he was supposed to be studying, but he was reading the most recent letter he had received from Severus instead. As soon as the large owl had flown over the field to him, carrying the waxed leather parchment, his heart jumped and everything else around him stopped.

_Dear Harry,_ it began, and those two words never failed to make him breathless. He still doubted that the meaning was intentional, but there was a part of him that was starting to hope that he might be as dear to Severus as Severus was to him. 

He wanted Severus to come home, but it was too early to ask if that was going to happen, he thought. Severus was, at least theoretically, free. Harry knew that Severus had never left the UK before and that he had truly spent his entire life at Hogwarts, first as a student and then as a teacher, and so to ask that he come back was… well, it was selfish. 

Maybe Harry should finish his Healer studies and go join him. People everywhere needed a healer, right? He didn’t need to stay in the UK, did he?

Harry looked down at the letter in his lap and traced his fingers over the precise lettering, and then looked up around him. It was a beautiful day – the sky blue, the air warm, the breeze cool. The castle was still looking rather abused, but the repairs were ongoing and it had survived its first year post-war. The castle and everything it represented would continue as long as there were people with the faith and the drive to see it through.

He’d come home on purpose. There were so many people who had been affected by the war, and, as Severus said, potions and spells only went so far. There wasn’t much he could do to fix the structure of Hogwarts, but he still wanted to do as much as he could to fix his home. This was where he was meant to be.

If Tibet was where Severus was meant to be, then Harry was glad he had found it.

He hoped otherwise, he desperately hoped otherwise.

Harry looked back at the letter and settled himself back against the trunk of the tree as comfortably as he could. He removed his jumper and settled it behind his back against the trunk of the tree and he began to read the letter in earnest.

_Do not feel you must censor your letters on my count; I am glad to hear anything you’d like to tell me, including anything you might consider ‘messy’ or unfavourable. You will not ‘put me off’, I assure you._

_In addition, please be assured that you are not required to forgive anyone. While I would hope otherwise, you also need not forgive me for any and all slights and unforgivables I have done toward you. I know they have been numerous._

Harry read those few lines over again and he shook his head in bemusement. They ought to be well past resentment over undeserved detentions and classroom bullying. They had been entirely different people then, living entirely different lives, so completely alien to who they were now, they were nearly unrecognizable. Neither of them had had the interest to see past their own prejudiced perceptions of the other, and now… Well, they had seen one another now.

_I know that is generally not the recommended advice. I have been told many times in my life that I should ‘forgive and forget’, that I should move on, and while I have never agreed with that particular advice, I don’t recommend holding on to anger and resentment, no matter that they have acted as my fuelling purpose for far too long. I have been informed that it is not a healthy path._

Harry had a momentary spike of jealousy run through him, sharp and jagged, over this person that Severus kept hinting around in his letters. He wanted Severus to have people there to support him, to keep him company, to care about him, to be his friends, but he wanted to be one of those people so badly, it was almost a taste in the back of his throat. He swallowed heavily around the feeling as he chastised himself for being an arse.

_If you cannot at present, or ever, forgive a person for their misactions toward you, you are not responsible for their hurt feelings. Perhaps they were misused by Albus, we certainly know that is strongly probable, but that is not your fault nor your responsibility. You are seeking therapy for your own healing, and, if they need it, so should they._

_It is likely a thing I should have done myself, but with my own stubborn disinclination to accept help of any kind, I did not. Besides which, wizards as a whole are ill-inclined to consider therapy as a true and worthwhile medical treatment, favouring potions and spells instead. While I fully believe in the power of a potion, perhaps they are not the cure-all we wish them to be._

_I am quite proud of you for both seeking therapy and for choosing it as a field of study. It is a brave action. Rather Gryffindor of you, although I shall let that pass._

Harry grinned, his face flushed with a warm, pleased blush, but his smile fell from his face as he began the next section.

_For a change in subject, I must make a full disclosure: I did know about Albus’s secretive group. I was apparently named a member from its early days, although –_

Harry felt his stomach drop like a stone in a lake. He stared at those words and remembered the nights Severus would leave their bed, the guilt on his face, the secrets, and he felt something very close to horror encompass his entire body, leaving him cold and frozen in place. His throat went dry and the parchment trembled in his hands.

He took in a deep breath. 

There was a reason. There would be a reason. Severus would have an explanation. He hadn’t sold Harry out like everyone else. He couldn’t have. There would be a reason.

His eyes dropped back down to the page, but a voice called out his name in an angry, sharp tone and he startled so badly he almost ripped the letter in two.

“Potter!”

Harry looked up from his spot under the tree to see Draco striding toward him, his fists tight against his side, his chin up and sharp as cut stone. Harry shoved the letter between the pages of one of his open books, slamming it shut and shuffling it back behind him, even as he stood to face the irate Draco who bore down on him.

Despite that Harry hadn’t seen Draco in well over a year, he looked his normal, crisply put together self, with his pressed trousers and tailored waistcoat, although the scar that he had earned in the war set that askew. It sliced down from Draco’s left eye over his cheek and to the edge of his jaw, and left a pink line that marred his skin like a jagged fracture in marble. Despite this, his jaw was set in a stubborn line and his eyes were furious. 

“I haven’t seen you in over a year, Malfoy. What could I possibly have done now to upset you?”

“As if you don’t know,” Draco shot back and he came to a sudden stop not more than two feet from Harry, with his feet squared, his hand clearly searching for a wand that wasn’t readily visible. 

“I’ve been here at Hogwarts, studying healing and minding my own business. I’ve only been as far as Hogsmeade in months, except to go visit Hermione and Ron, so no, I have no idea what you’re on about. Did something come out in the Prophet? If Rita said I said something about the search for your father, I have no idea what she wrote. I didn’t say anything. I told her no comment.”

“My father is likely dead and of absolutely no concern of mine. This has nothing to do with him.”

Harry’s brain stuttered awkwardly for a moment as his thoughts flashed through remembered images of Lucius Malfoy, of his own distrust and hatred and revulsion over the man, and then he said, “Well, I’m sorry your father is dead.”

Draco frowned at him, a neat line creasing between his brows. “Why? I’m not. My mother isn’t. No one ought to be sorry he’s dead, certainly not you. The way he would talk about you during that… During the time you were away. He deserves whatever fate he was given and hopefully it was as cruel as this world could give him. No, I’m not here about my father or about anything printed in that rag of a paper. I’m here about Neville.”

“I… Neville?” Harry readjusted his glasses as they slid down his nose. “What’s Neville to you?”

Draco’s eyes widened as a thin, disbelieving laugh emerged from his throat. “What’s Neville to… I know you’ve been gone, but have you no interest in wizarding society whatsoever? Do you not follow the gossip at all? Even that paper that loves to hate you has published several articles about it. We’re all the rage and all the scandal.”

“You and Neville?”

“Neville and I, yes, and Ginevra.”

Harry opened his mouth and closed it again soundlessly, and he had to look away for a moment before he could say, “You. And Neville. And Ginny. Are what? Exactly?”

“Engaged. Or soon to be. Ginny’s mother insisted we wait until the school year was over, and so it has yet to be announced. The revelation is set a month from today. How could you not know? Everyone is talking about it. We’ve set everything on its head, even more than you could ever do. Unless you impregnated someone in your time away, of course. That would cause a stir.”

“I didn’t im– I’m gay! And I don’t want to be all the rage or all the scandal or whatever it is that you’re so chuffed about. How did you… How on earth did Ginny, of all people, stoop to this? I thought she had more sense than to get tangled up in your nonsense.”

“You fucked our potions professor and then, from what I hear, went off and fucked your way through the colonies, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t give a shit what you think about my love life,” Draco crossed his arms over his chest and Harry pointedly did not notice the pull of the fabric against his biceps, because he would have felt very ill if he had. “We’re happy, which is more than I can say about you. You’ve clearly taken after Severus and become a miserable bastard in your old age.”

“I am _not_ a… I’m in _therapy._ I’m traumatised, for fuck’s sake. I’m allowed to be miserable if I want to be, but I’m not. I’m doing fine. I’m getting better. You can’t say I’m miserable just because I don’t want to accept your stupid boyfriend’s whiny apology! I don’t _have_ to forgive him. Or you. I know you were part of Dumbledore’s little group too. I don’t have to forgive anyone and I don’t want to right now! Maybe someday, but I just got back! It’s all still a bit too fresh.”

Draco put a hand to the bridge of his nose to give it a firm pinch and his shoulders slumped. “Is that what he did? I told him it was a bad idea. I told him nothing good would come from it, but the idiot feels so guilty all the time, even though I told him it wasn’t his fault. Dumbledore lied to us. I’m sure you know.”

“Oh, I know.” Harry could feel his anger rising up in him and he stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep himself from doing something ill-advised. Like murdering Draco Malfoy. “It’s all anyone wants me to know. Dumbledore lied to them and they didn’t _mean_ to send me away to get sliced up like a Christmas ham and to get raped and abused in ways I couldn’t have imagined were possible. Dumbledore was poisoned by Voldemort anyway, right? So it’s not like it was even Dumbledore doing the lying and blackmailing and manipulation, so what am I even angry about, right?”

A peculiar expression crossed over Draco’s face, but Harry had built up too much steam to stop by that point. “But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t. I don’t care who Dumbledore threatened. So Dumbledore threatened Neville’s grandmother – so what? How is that old woman – who treated Neville like rubbish, by the way – worth selling me into what happened? How is that worth it?”

“It wasn’t,” Draco said in a calm voice and it took some of the wind from Harry’s sails. Draco wasn’t supposed to be the reasonable one. “It wasn’t worth what happened to you. I’m not going to try to rationalize anything that was done. None of it was good. I saw only a fraction of what happened to you and it was… It was disturbing.” 

Another look slid over Draco’s face, but then his lip curled into a sneer. He looked Harry dead in the eye and said in a firm, deliberate tone, “But I want you to know that Neville is important to me. Far more important than you are, which is to say that I don’t actually give a shit about you at all. Do not make my boyfriend cry again. We are all traumatised, you absolute mangled ballsack. None of us had a happy childhood. We didn’t live in a wardrobe or wherever it was that your relatives kept you, but I’d like to see you grow up under Lucius and see where that got you. And Neville wanted to save his grandmother because she was all he had. He didn’t want to see her thrown in Azkaban. He saw what happened to your godfather. He didn’t want to do that to his only remaining family. Neville cares about you, because he’s basically a Hufflepuff in lion’s clothes with all the social sense that that implies, but you would never be more important to him than his family. Don’t be daft if you can help it.”

Harry opened his mouth and then closed it again with a firm press of his lips.

“I don’t like you either, you know.”

"Imagine how surprised I am to hear it. Don't misunderstand me, Potter: I don't want to be enemies with you. Despite everything, you still have strong political clout, which I, of course, also possess, but more importantly, you have the adoration of the people – a power you appear to deliberately underestimate and one that unfortunately eludes me. You are a war hero. You killed Voldemort. I am not a war hero, as I have only personally fought and killed nine Death Eaters, rescued thirty seven children from the battle, treated the wounded afterward, collected bodies from the field and stayed for the year after the battle to financially support the reconstruction of Hogwarts, while also opening a trauma ward at St. Mungo's and a home and preparatory school for war orphans. You can see how lacking I am in comparison to your actions.”

Harry felt his face heat up in outrage, but Draco held up a hand to stop him.

“I don’t hold that against you. People prefer the name Potter to the name Malfoy for good reason, and I’m sure that had you not been forced into the role of Voldemort’s plaything, you would have been capable of more during and after the war. But all of this puts me in the uncomfortable position of needing you. I intend to be Minister one day, ideally the youngest Minister in recorded history, and to do that, I will need public support.”

Harry waited to see if Draco had more to add to this and when nothing was forthcoming, he said, “You come here, yell at me about your boyfriend, insult me several times over and then ask me to support your political career? Why would I do that?”

Draco smiled. “I intend to be a better Minister than any we have seen in our lives. I don’t want another Dark Lord to rise up. I want to put a stop to the Pureblood movement. I want to encourage education about Muggles and I want social programs in place to reduce the stigma for muggleborns and squibs. You’re working on a health program based on muggle psychology? I want to encourage more programs where we examine Muggle technology and innovation and see how we can use their expertise to help reduce the stagnancy of Wizarding society. And, eventually, I want to eliminate the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy completely.”

“You… Why? Why would you want all of that?”

“Because our society is unhealthy and unsustainable, and I don’t want us to die out. Voldemort grew in strength because there are fewer wizards born in every generation and that is terrifying to anyone with eyes. Purebloods tried to combat this by turning inward, away from Muggles, but they succeeded only in creating madness and fear. You met my aunt Bellatrix, didn’t you?”

“You’re trying to… to save wizarding society?”

“I want the name Malfoy to mean something again, and if I must save all of wizardkind to see that happen, then so be it.”

Harry felt like he probably needed to sit down, but, as there was little chance that Draco would put his tailored trousers anywhere close to the ground and he didn't want them on uneven footing, he decided against it. Harry stared at Draco as if he might see some crack in his veneer, that he would blink and the whiny child he had met years ago would be back, but it didn’t happen, and he was incredibly irritated to realise that Draco Malfoy had become a bigger person than he had. That, he thought, was incredibly rude.

“Okay. If that’s all true, then yes, I’ll support you.”

Draco laughed and, as he shook his head, he said, “You’re a shit negotiator, Potter. I had several offers in reserve to get you to agree to this.”

“Like what?”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it? So earnest, you Gryffindors. It’s rather appealing, but does put you all at such a tactical disadvantage, doesn’t it?” He grinned as Harry made a face and before Harry could say anything in defence of his house, Draco said, “I’ll offer you a favour in exchange for your support, Potter. Hold on to it until I become Minister. It’ll be worth more then.”

“Cocky prat, aren’t you?”

“Some people find that appealing,” Draco said with a wink and he moved to turn away, but looked back before he did. “I’ll talk to Neville. He wants to keep working at Hogwarts, and you’re on your internship, so it’s in all of our best interests to make it palatable. I don’t need Neville upset and you, well, you shouldn’t be responsible for his guilt. I’ll talk to him.”

With that, Draco nodded and walked away.

Harry stood awkwardly for a moment, feeling rather numb and out of sorts by the interaction, but he finally sat down again and reached for the letter from Severus he had put aside.

Just as he went to open it again, a rather large owl flew toward him and dropped a bright red envelope in his lap before making a hasty retreat. The letter began to smoke almost immediately, as if it had been simmering for some time, and he opened it with a wince, already anticipating the sender. Neville had apparently gained two avid defenders, and Ginny was not going to be quite so discreet.

“Harry James Potter, _I cannot believe you!_ I don’t care _what_ Neville said to you, you don’t get to make him _feel ashamed that his parents are sane again!_ That is so – If you don’t know how terrible that is, _I don’t know what to tell you,”_ Ginny’s voice emerged from the letter, as shrill as her mother’s had been over the Ford Anglia, but with none of the restraint.

He smothered it under his cast-off jumper, but it continued to berate him through the fabric. He winced as Ginny reached a particularly piercing frequency and he grudgingly settled in for the duration.

* * *

“Do you have everything?”

“Of course I have everything, you bloody woman. It’s hardly difficult to pack when I have only scant possessions to my name.”

“Ai, bloody woman, you say? Just like a man, to reduce a person down to their ability to menstruate. Or previous ability, since I’ve left that long in the past.” Qingling set her hands on her hips and glared at him. “I’ll have you know you would be the bloody one if I had left that uterus of yours where I’d found it.”

“I –” Snape stopped still to stare at the old woman. He had Ophidia on his hip while Belladonna sat on his bed, playing with both her own and her sister’s wooden teething rings. She held one in each chubby fist and flailed them together and she released a piercing screech every time they successfully smashed together. “That is not what I meant by that. I did not mean bloody in any sort of – of – literal sense. I’m British, for fuck’s sake.”

“That,” Qingling pointed a gnarled finger at him, “is no excuse for anything whatsoever.”

Belladonna screeched as the two wooden rings connected violently and she laughed uproariously as she did it again, while her sister watched impassively from her higher vantage point. Ophidia noticed Qingling’s outstretched finger and, without a change in her expression, she reached out and grabbed hold of the digit and told Qingling, “Nanananaboo.”

A soft smile transformed Qingling’s face and she wrapped the rest of her fingers around the infant’s tiny fist and gave it a small shake. “That’s right, little one. No no no. There is no excuse at all.”

Snape made a face and handed the child over into Qingling’s willing arms. “All the better to get these ones away from you as soon as possible. They are too impressionable.”

“Don’t listen to the bad man,” Qingling stage-whispered to Ophidia, who stared up at her in rapt fascination. “You stay here with your Qingling and we’ll get you sorted out properly.”

Snape rolled his eyes and took another look around his room for things that may have been forgotten. There wasn’t much, of course. The few Tibetan clothes he had been given were packed away and he was once again dressed in the clothes in which he had arrived (magically readjusted to account for the weight he had gained over the past year) – his trousers and waistcoat and his large, voluminous robe over it all. He felt strange and both lost and confined within the clothing.

The medallion was tucked in the pocket of his waistcoat as he had no desire to walk through Hogwarts with two infants in his arms. His return would create enough of a chatter and he had no desire to court more. If the Prophet got wind of his children, they’d be splashed over the front page and the entire paper would be filled with nothing but ignorant speculation. He’d much rather just apparate to his rooms directly and avoid the whole lot of it.

The handmade cot had been shrunk down into his bag, as well as his clothes and those of the twins. The few toys they had been gifted were also packed away into his bag – with the exception of the two teething rings that kept Belladonna occupied, as he knew that if he took them from her, her screams would be much less joyful than they were at present. A portkey journey was bad enough without an infant screaming into his ear the whole way.

The new portkey sat on his chest of drawers. It was a rusty horseshoe, missing half of one prong, and otherwise looking precisely like so much rubbish. He was glad it had been set to require intention to travel, as both of the twins had grabbed at it several times over and the last thing he needed was to have them teleported to Hogwarts without him. The very thought nearly sent him into a fit. Who designed portkeys? Complete idiots, they must have been, not to know that children will touch anything given a slim opportunity. It was amazing that there hadn’t been toddlers sent to all ends of the earth due to portkey mishaps.

The old portkey, the rubber duck, was packed into his bag. Ophidia had taken a liking to its large blue eyes and the soft swoop of its tail and for the last month had insisted sleeping with it. She had no interest in it during the day, but if it wasn’t present when she lay her small head down, she made her displeasure known.

“Looks like you’ve packed the lot of it then. Scoop that one up. Like I said, Nian Zhēn can’t get away from his potion, but if you don’t come say goodbye to him, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Snape rolled his eyes again. He slid the bag over his shoulder, crossbody, and then bent to retrieve Belladonna. Once hefted, she crashed the two rings into either side of his face and he captured both her hands in one of his and gave her a stern look, to which she offered a gummy grin, one that was a little too close to knowing for his liking.

Qingling picked up the portkey in her free hand and said, “Well? Come on then. Stop your dawdling.”

“Dawdling? I am not actually a child, despite what must be, for you, a confusingly vast age differential,” he muttered to himself, but with sufficient volume that he knew she could hear as she led him out of the small hut.

"And now we're degrading me over my age? How very ageist of you."

"I am not going to miss your cheek one bit, harpy."

“Mmm,” she agreed without any commitment and led him down the path toward Nian Zhēn’s laboratory. The school was suspiciously quiet, with no students milling about the grounds as they usually did, but it was still fairly early in the day so perhaps they were in for the morning meal.

Belladonna babbled something into his ear as they walked past the gardens and he replied, absently, “Yes, you’re right,” to which she made another long string of sounds and showed him the few tooth marks she had left on the teething ring. She had the sharp edge of one tooth protruding from her gum that was, according to Qingling, coming in vastly early, but Snape had decided that she had willed herself into a homegrown weapon as she was constantly so extremely pleased by the damage she could do with it. He made an impressed noise over the markations that she seemed to appreciate and then she held up the ring to show to her sister, who peered over Qingling’s shoulder at the two of them.

Qingling had come to a stop in front of Nian Zhēn’s door and waited for him to catch up the few steps he had lagged behind, and then, with a smile he didn’t appreciate, she knocked on the door and waited for Nian Zhēn to call out for them to enter.

Snape narrowed his eyes and braced himself for the inevitable, and when the doors opened, the laboratory had been transformed into a vast room, large enough to hold every resident of the school, who all burst out with, “Surprise!” as they entered. Qingling’s mother sat in a well-polished wooden wheelchair near to the front of the group, her small, wrinkled face creased into a delighted smile, and a package wrapped in colourful fabric on her lap.

Belladonna screeched in joy and flailed her teething rings in the air.

Despite that he had anticipated some sort of surprise farewell from Nian Zhēn, perhaps a last meal with the professors and a small gift, the mass of everyone and their smiling faces felt like something of a blow to his chest.

“Oh,” he said, quite softly.

“Ha ha!” Nian Zhēn grinned widely as he came over to hug him, sandwiching Belladonna between them. “Did we manage to surprise you, then? I didn’t think it possible, my friend!”

“You, ah…” Snape glanced around the room and his heart did a strange thing in his chest as his words caught in his throat. “You did surprise me, yes. You… You all came to see me off?”

“Of course! You’ve been a part of our little family here for the last year. Did you think we would let you slink off out of our lives with no notice at all?”

Snape, who had spent nearly thirty years of his life at Hogwarts and had left it with no fanfare whatsoever as he would have expected none, had no reply to that. He shook his head and sniffed to clear the unwanted prickle from his eyes.

Qingling smiled knowingly, uncharacteristically gentle, and said, “Come, we have gifts for you and your young ones – all shrinkable, so there’s no need to worry on that count. My mother has something special for you as well, string bean. She insisted.”

A small pack of the students came toward him and collected Belladonna from his lax arms, passing the infant between them to say goodbye to her (he could see that Ophidia was enduring the same treatment some distance away), and the students all offered him heartfelt thank yous and well wishes, smiling at him as they did. He thanked them in return, feeling rather like a stunned flobberworm.

Qingling took his arm and led him over to Qingzhao, who reached out and tapped at his leg with a walking stick and said, “You weren’t thinking of leaving without saying goodbye to me, were you, now?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he answered, although he hadn’t spared her a single thought, and by the smirk she sent him, it was clear she knew this.

“Open your gift so I can go home. It’s past my bedtime.”

“Mother, it’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

Qingzhao gave her daughter an amused look and said, “Just because you don’t have a life, doesn’t mean I don’t.”

Snape took the gift from the old woman’s hands and unwrapped the colourful fabric, which he expected to be a gift wrapping of some kind but was, in fact, the thing itself. It was a jumble of fabric dyed in a multitude of jarring colours, and he held it up and turned it one way and another to try to identify what it might be. It seemed to have straps and buckles and several large pouches, or perhaps one very large pouch, and he was at a loss to determine if it was some sort of very complicated jumper or perhaps a poorly designed satchel. He looked at Qingzhao and raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“It’s a sling, you ridiculous man. For your babies. Qingling, show the poor dear. You put your arms – yes, exactly, and then you strap those – yes, just like that. Now, you see? That flap can be secured to keep the babies in separate compartments, if they’re feeling argumentative, or you can bundle them up together against your chest or your back, whichever works best. Lets you get your work done with your arms free, but you’ve still got the little ones close at hand.”

Snape tolerated Qingling forcing his robe from his shoulders as she tucked the sling around his body and secured the straps, showing him how to do it himself as she did. It left a rather saggy pouch dangling against his chest, as if he were a badly designed kangaroo, and the whole thing seemed rather cumbersome rather than helpful.

“We need some babies over here,” Qingling called out and from opposing directions, the crowd parted as someone from each side of the room carried one of the two twins toward him.

Qingling showed him how to tuck both infants into the sling (they seemed to teeter between curiosity and outrage as they were manhandled) and then she stepped back and tilted her hands outward, as if to say, _Ta-da._

Snape looked down at his infants, who peered up at him, equally confused by the state of things, and Qingzhao laughed, a small, thin sound like pebbles falling to the ground.

“You’ll all adjust to it, I promise. It’ll keep the babies safe and out of the way and keep your hands free. It was given to me by my mother, who received it from her mother-in-law, and I’ve passed it down myself. The last person to use it was my great great grandson’s wife, so it’s proven its usefulness more times than I care to count. And now I give it to you.”

Snape looked at the multicoloured sling and something in his expression must have betrayed him because Qingzhao gave another thin laugh and said, “The colours are a bit much, I know, but you can charm it whatever colour you’d like. And when you’re done with it, pass it along to someone else who needs it.”

“Why are you giving such a gift to me? Surely there are members of your family who have infants to whom you can pass a heirloom?”

“I am passing it to a member of my family,” Qingzhao said quite solemnly, although there was a twinkle in her eyes. “My daughter, bless her, considers you her son – a tall, snippy, rather stupid son, but still. Each of her children used that sling, and so shall you.”

Snape glanced at Qingling, who glared daggers at her mother, even as a pink flush graced her wrinkled face.

“I said nothing of the sort,” Qingling assured him, “except perhaps the tall and rather stupid part.”

“Of course,” Snape swallowed thickly and he ducked his head and pet his hand through the ever thickening hair growing over his children’s heads. They seemed to have adjusted to the sling and they babbled to one another, no doubt sharing observations and secrets. He looked back at Qingling who still held his robe for him, ready for his return to Britain, and, only needing to clear his throat once, he asked her, “Could you help me with my robe?”

Qingling looked down at it as if she had also forgotten she held it and then she held it out and helped him navigate his arms into its generous folds, and when it was on his shoulders properly, she came around the front of him to tuck the ends in around the sling. She touched the infants’ faces softly and slid a thumb over each of their foreheads before she pulled away with surprisingly damp eyes.

“Well then. You’d best be off, I think. Can someone shrink and pack up the gifts?”

Nian Zhēn came forward with a small satchel already prepared for him and he tucked it over one of Snape’s arms and then pulled him into a tight, enthusiastic embrace.

“I’ll miss your company, my friend! Don’t be a stranger. You are welcome back any time. Any time at all.”

‘Thank you,” Snape replied in a tight voice. He turned to Qingzhao and bent to offer her an embrace as well, but she shook her head and pointed a finger to her cheek and turned it up toward him, and he took the command for what it was and pressed a dry kiss to her cheek, and she, in turn, lay her thin hand against his own cheek and smiled at him.

He turned to Qingling, who sniffed at him and came forward again to tuck his robes around his children.

“Take care of these ones, will you? Even the strange one.”

“I’m starting to think you might like the strange one best,” he accused her and she gave a startled laugh.

“Perhaps I do, at that,” she said softly, without meeting his eyes, and, at that, he reached out and pulled her in with his long arms, sandwiching his children between the two of them, and she gripped her fingers into the back of his robe for one long moment before she pulled away and glared at him.

“Off with you before you completely ruin my reputation.”

“Hardly a concern, harpy,” he replied and gathered his other luggage onto his shoulder. He nodded at the students around the room, and then around at his friends. “Well, I think I am ready.”

Qingling pulled the broken horseshoe portkey from her pocket and handed it to him, patting his hand discreetly as she did, and he gripped it tightly in his fist.

He shared another long look with each of them, wondering when he might ever see them again, knowing that he likely would never see Qingzhao again, unless she chose to will herself into immortality, and he said, “Thank you.”

Nian Zhēn smiled widely and took Qingling’s arm. “We were glad to have you. Be happy, my friend. And take care of your small family.”

He nodded, swallowing down emotion he hadn’t expected himself to have. He looked down at his children, who peered out at him from the safety of their sling, and then he turned his attention to the portkey and activated it.

He felt the terrible tug at his gut and the feeling of chaotic swirling, and then he landed, wrapping his arm about his children to brace them against the landing. The air was immediately damp and cool against his skin, smelling of loam and moss, and, as Belladonna burst into piercing cries over her journey, he looked up to see Hogwarts nestled in among the thick morning fog. Several windows flickered with the lights of early risers and he could already smell the damp of the stone and the tang of the fires.

He looked down at his children and soothed Belladonna as he told them, “We’re home.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm only a day late this time! Yay! 
> 
> Happy Halloween everyone! It's November now, which is very weird because my internal clock tells me we're only halfway through March but somehow fifty years in the future as well, so you know. That's something. I hope you all are still doing as well as you can this year. Take care of yourselves. <3

Glad to have his hands free care of the recently gifted sling, regardless of how hideous it was, Snape reached into his pocket to take out the medallion. It was cold to the touch and he turned it over once, wondering if he should have disposed of it, but then he clasped it within his fist and apparated directly into his old chambers. The chances that his rooms had been given to someone else to use were slim considering the speed in which administrative tasks moved at Hogwarts, and he was proven correct when he and his twins appeared in the middle of his more or less untouched sitting room.

The chairs were still gone, vanished to wherever his magic had decided to send them. His books, Snape noticed, had been moved to a tall and wide bookshelf, but worse, he was dismayed to note, the entire collection had been organized alphabetically according to the author, as if organizing by subject first then author was not the most appropriate and sensible and therefore most obvious method that should be used. Minerva was a terror with no logical sense to her brain whatsoever.

Belladonna fussed in her sling. She pushed at the fabric and at her sister, who glared at her, as she tried for freedom.

Snape set down the two bags on the table which had once housed the majority of his collection of books, and from one of them, he pulled out the shrunken cot and set it in the middle of the room before resizing it.

“There,” he said, as it settled into place, and he pulled Belladonna from the sling first and set her down into the cot. Ophidia shifted to take up the now empty space in the sling and seemed perfectly happy with her higher observation spot. “I’ll need to set you up properly in the bedroom, but this should do for now while I – ”

He jumped as his fireplace burst into life (he had never connected it to the floo system before – the last thing he needed was people bursting into his chambers without any notice – so Minerva must have done it herself) and from the flames, the Headmistress herself stepped out, shaking soot from her robes and setting her pointed hat to rights. She froze as soon as she took one look into the room, her eyes fixed on the cot and the infant within it. 

Belladonna stared back at her for only a short moment before she screamed and threw one of her teething rings in Minerva’s direction, but it missed by a large margin and clattered off the floor and pinged into the corner of the room.

“My word,” Minerva said, with a thin hand pressed to her chest, "What is – " She trailed off as she raised her eyes and found Snape standing with another infant strapped to his chest in a sling that was still garishly multicoloured. Her mouth dropped open but she seemed completely incapable of producing sound.

“You know my preference has always been that people come to my door and _knock._ That has not changed.”

Minerva stared at him for a long moment and then she burst out, “These are babies!”

Snape rolled his eyes and levitated Belladonna’s teething ring back to her before she remembered it was gone. She took it reverently, with such focus, she seemed nearly to forget that a stranger had appeared.

“Well spotted, Minerva.”

“Whose babies are these? Did you – did you _take_ someone’s infants? Why would you do that?”

“I'm not going to take someone else’s children. I wouldn’t have these if I’d had a choice in the matter,” he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Belladonna made a noise of complaint and knocked her toy against the side of the cot as she stared at the booth of them. He glared back at her, because he had no interest in her cheek, and then demanded of Minerva, “Why did you connect my rooms to the floo system? Now I’ll have students and parents and hobnobs traipsing through my rooms as if this were Diagon Alley.”

“These aren’t your rooms anymore! You left. I connected them to the floo system because it’s a long walk down here and my knees do not appreciate the stairs. The floo system is _convenient,_ and moreover, as I said, these are no longer your rooms! When you apparated in, you set off the wards I had placed and I came down expecting an intruder. There were several students who attempted to break in here during the year. Someone even tried to use your password several weeks ago, and would have gotten if I hadn’t double locked the entrance.”

She then pointed a long finger at Belladonna, who noticed the movement and pointed back as she babbled something angrily, no doubt informing Minerva of how rude it was to point at a stranger.

“Where did these children come from?”

“Now, Minerva, I’m sure you’ve had the Your Bodies and What They Do speech with your house in second year. This cannot be a mystery.”

“You have never been funny, young man, so do not attempt it now. Explain! Where is their mother?”

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose again, feeling a headache coming on, and he sighed. He ignored Minerva standing there with her hands on her hips and shrugged out of his outer robe and tossed it at the wall as he always had before. The hooks leapt out of the stone to catch it, as he had charmed them to do. Hogwarts still knew these were his rooms, no matter what Minerva might say. He further ignored her irritated huff and took Ophidia from the sling and set her down in the cot alongside her sister, and then he attempted to free himself from the various clasps and bindings of the sling with as much grace as possible.

Minerva made another impatient huff at him and he interrupted her before she could complain.

“I am their mother. One extremely elderly and barely sane woman, one even worse than you, confirmed to me that I am their mother and besides which, I gave birth to them, which is rather conclusive evidence, I’d say, although I’d rather not get into the details of that, if you don’t mind.”

“If I don’t… I _do_ mind, in fact. To the best of my knowledge, wizards do not generally go about giving birth to anything whatsoever, and you, also to the best of my knowledge, are a wizard. What on earth did you do?”

Snape freed himself from the sling and set it down beside his other bags. His rooms were dark and rather musty, although clearly they had been under the care of the house elves as there was no dust littering the space, but he longed for the breeze that swept down over the valley and blew into his small Tibetan room, bringing with it the scent of mountain flowers and rivers and ice. His clothing felt tight and binding. His waistcoat felt like a straightjacket. He felt dreadfully homesick and had to remind himself that he was home, that this was his home.

He found his wand tucked into his waistcoat and waved it at the empty space where two chairs previously sat. They didn’t reappear, but in their place, a wide, deep sofa appeared, curved to the left of the fireplace against the wall. It was a deep russet, like much of the fabric had been dyed in Tibet, and he reached out to touch the fabric, feeling a deep longing as it was the same thickly woven wool that he had left behind, with a slight scratch that caught under his fingertips.

“Sit down,” he told Minerva. “If you insist I have this conversation, I’ll have it comfortable, if you don’t mind.”

She gave him a long look and then sat, taking off her hat and placing it on her knees primly. She then gave him a hard and expectant stare.

Snape sat down and related the story to her, from the invention of the blasted potion to the discovery of his pregnancy and through to their birth. He told her about Tibet, about the school, about his friends, about his small room, about the mountains and the sky and the gardens. He told her how he’d been reluctant to return as he’d found somewhere to be happy and people who he could learn to trust, but that he had, in the end, recognized that he would stagnate there. There wasn’t enough to challenge him, and that sort of aimless happiness would only lead him down an inevitable path to entropy. 

He also, although he did not tell Minerva this, wanted to come back to Harry. Their letters to one another over the last months had given him a glimmer of hope that perhaps things were not as dead as they had seemed. The babies complicated matters. He wanted Harry to want to reform their relationship, hopefully without the specters of Voldemort and prophecy and death looming over them, and the last thing he wanted was for Harry to feel obligated because he’d accidentally created a family to be indebted to. Snape was perfectly happy to raise them on his own, if need be. They were his own mistake (lovely as they were) and his own burden, not Harry’s.

When he was finished, Minerva pursed her lips and glanced over the twins. Belladonna had fallen asleep soon after he began to speak, but Ophidia still sat where he had left her against the wall of the cot and she studied Minerva with her usual intensity. 

“These are Harry Potter’s children,” she said when he finished and he scowled at her. He hadn’t mentioned Harry by name, but it wasn’t as if he had had a long string of lovers waiting in the wings to impregnate him, so he could hardly find fault with her conclusions.

“These are _my_ children and I would ask that you keep this to yourself.”

“And why exactly would I do that?”

“Because if you do not, I will turn around and take these children back to Tibet so fast, it will be as if I never returned. I will not have them, nor I, turned into a sideshow, and that is precisely what we would be if the bloody Prophet got wind of this and published the story. These children are the offspring of two men and are the result of a newly invented potion, one which I have no intention to attempt to replicate. And worse yet, their parents happen to be Harry bloody Potter, savior of the wizarding world, and Severus Snape, former Death Eater and societal unmentionable. Can you imagine the headlines?”

She opened her mouth and he cut her off with a shake of his head.

“I told you in my letter that I would return here only if you agreed to my stipulations.

Minerva scowled deeply at him as she protested, “You told me that I couldn’t tell anyone that I’d hired you or that you were returning. I thought you were being secretive and antisocial, not hiding babies from their own father!”

“All I ask is that you let me be the one to inform him.”

“And you will, of course. Inform him.”

Snape hesitated and then said, “When it is the right time.”

She made a sound of pure disgust and he continued, somewhat defensively, “He has spent his life obligated to someone, to something, and he deserves the chance to be free of it all.”

“He deserves the chance to make a decision. You can’t keep this from him, not even out of the goodness of your heart, Severus Snape. Harry has the right to know.”

Ophidia broke in and said, rather emphatically, “Bababanano.”

They both turned to stare at her and Snape scowled at her. “Don’t you start too.”

She grinned widely at him and smacked her tiny, chubby hand at the edge of the cot, which promptly set her off-balance, and she fell over onto her sister, who then woke with a furious scream that was amplified as it bounced off the stone walls.

Snape rolled his eyes and immediately stood to gather Belladonna from the cot. He bounced her on his hip and hushed her, but her eyes frantically took in the room around her, at the newness of it and when her gaze fell on Minerva, she screamed louder, indignant that she had a stranger for an audience. Ophidia only squirmed where she had fallen, and he did not think it would be long before her frustrations led her to a bid for further mobility.

“Oh, poor love,” Minerva said, her face softening into the sort of love-sick look he had grown accustomed to people giving his infants. “That must have been a shock. Here, let me try…” And, with that, she turned into her feline self.

Belladonna cut off her cries, as if someone had cast a muffliato on her, and she stared at where the strange woman had been and stared at the cat that now sat perched primly on the sofa. She looked at Snape, tears still in her eyes, then back at the cat, and then she reached out a grabby hand and made a sharp, demanding sound that Snape knew all too well.

“You’ll be missing patches of fur, and don’t pretend I didn’t warn you,” he warned Minerva and was barely able to get seated before Belladonna tossed herself at the cat with a delighted shriek and fell face first into Minerva’s grey fur. 

“Well, now that you’re introduced, you old tabby cat, how would you care to be their godmother?”

Minerva reverted to her human self, her mouth agape, and Belladonna, seemingly unfazed by the change, stuck her entire hand in the woman’s mouth.

Minerva spat the hand out, rather startled, and then took Belladonna’s small hand in her own and wiped it clean on her tartan wrap. Belladonna fisted her hand into the wrap and tugged herself closer, babbling a long and detailed story to her new friend, and Minerva’s eyes crinkled in delight at her. 

She looked over to where Ophidia watched them irritably, and her eyes were damp when she said, “I would be honoured.”

* * *

Harry couldn't imagine that Ginny had expected a response to her Howler, no matter how many times she had demanded to know what exactly he'd been thinking, but what he did do was write a letter to Neville.

Well, the first thing he had done was go to Hogsmeade and storm into Christine’s office. He was angry. He was furious. How dare Ginny send him a Howler? And who did Draco think he was, anyhow? He was doing his best, he knew he was, and how dare they come at him for defending himself? Neville had been in the wrong. Not him.

Christine listened to him vent without much in the way of comment, at least at first. He paced the length of her office and told her about the confrontation with Neville, how Neville had backed him into a corner and demanded that Harry accept his apology, even after Harry had told him no. He told her about Draco coming to talk to him and his threats and bewildering request for political support, and he told her about Ginny’s letter (after first having to explain what a Howler was). He stomped back and forth over the length of her office, and argued about how Neville hadn’t had to pay the price he’d paid and yet was still rewarded by getting his family back, something that was completely out of reach for Harry.

It wasn’t fair, he told her.

Christine had listened quietly, and when he finally trailed off, no more in him to release, she reached over, took out a pack of cigarettes and a medium sized crystal orb from a drawer in her desk, and lit a cigarette from the pack. When she blew out the blue-grey smoke, it was immediately sucked into the orb that rested on the nearest corner of her desk. The orb swirled with smoke and reminded Harry of the glowing lava lamps that had sat behind the bar in one of his favourite clubs in Montreal.

She then looked at him dead in the eye and asked, “What are some signs of untreated trauma?”

Which had silenced him immediately, and he’d stared at her for a long moment before he’d asked, “What?”

She gave him a half-smile and waited, and he let out a hard breath and thought for a moment.

“Anger,” he said and then counted things off on his fingers. “Nightmares. Insomnia. Depression. Anxiety. Panic attacks. Shame. Guilt. Dissociation.”

“Among others,” she nodded and took a drag on her cigarette. “Have you witnessed any of these symptoms in those around you?”

Harry rolled his eyes and he sat down and sank into a sullen slouch in a chair. 

It was a mild conflict of interest, Christine had warned him, for her to act as his therapist while simultaneously acting as his, albeit unofficial, teacher, but he had assured her that it would be fine. In fact, he had thought it would be perfect if she could integrate the two – he could receive therapy and a lesson in psychology at the same time. How efficient, he had thought. 

And he didn't disagree with his naive past self – he was learning a lot and it certainly was _efficient_ – but he hadn't anticipated just how annoying it would be to be made to think when all he wanted to do was complain. He had to remind himself of what Alexandre had told him when he had first started to see Christine, that there were much cheaper people to complain to if that was all he wanted to get.

She’d begun to teach him a great many things, long before he had asked her for formal lessons and the least of which was how to value himself as a living person rather than someone who was meant to die… and then failed to do it.

Or failed to stay dead, anyway.

Christine took another drag from her cigarette and raised an eyebrow at him as he hesitated on his response, and he finally sighed heavily and said, "I know. I know. Draco even said as much, that Neville – that they all are having a bit of a shit time of it. I just…”

“Don’t want to deal with it,” she finished, having heard him say it a time or two before. “You aren’t obligated to deal with it, of course, but if you’re planning on becoming a mind healer, which I know you are, then ‘dealing with it’ will be your chosen profession.”

“I know. You’re right. I know. Do you… Do you think I should offer to help Neville? If he’s struggling? Do you think I’m ready for that?”

“That isn’t for me to decide. I think your legilimency techniques have improved and you’re certainly becoming more adept at recognizing and isolating memories and thought patterns that require healing in others. Your friends have been most helpful guinea pigs, and I think we can begin to work on some of my own clients together, those who’ll consent to the treatment. I think you should get some more experience under your belt, but yes, I think you can offer to help Neville. Poppy believes that you are ready to be a practicing apprentice, and I defer to her, although I do agree with her.” She blew out another cloud of smoke, which was quickly absorbed by the orb, and she tapped her cigarette against the dish on her desk. “And afterward, when you have a few successful sessions under your belt, you might want to direct your attention toward that godfather of yours.”

“Sirius?”

Christine nodded. “With what you’ve told me and from what I’ve observed myself, I think his time in this Boundaries place has had a significant effect on his mind. He seems to have distanced himself from the person he became in his adulthood and has, instead, reverted to a younger version of himself, like a computer loading an earlier save file.” 

Harry didn’t know anything about computers, but nodded along with this anyway.

“This is only a hypothesis, of course, but I think he is undergoing a type of fragmentation and he has embraced a time when he felt most like who he believes himself to be, who he should have been. As he is, he will not be able to sustain employment, friendships, relationships… You said that the Headmistress is replacing him, and I know that his romantic relationship is suffering heavily.”

“His relationship… with Remus? How do you know about that? I barely know anything about it.”

She stubbed out the remains of her cigarette and then sat back in her chair. “I went to the Hog’s Head for supper last week and bumped into Remus Lupin. Or, more to the point, I was sitting at a table with my food when a very drunk man sat down at my table, told me he knew I was your psychiatrist and then, like many before him,” she said with a small smile, “he took that as an opportunity for a free, if drunken, therapy session.”

She held up a hand as his mouth dropped open and she assured him, “I always obey the same rules I apply in any therapy session – full confidentiality unless someone’s safety is threatened – but he spent a good bit of the evening telling me about how he wishes he could talk to you, and how, since I know you, I should do it for him, since he was a ‘giant girl’s blouse’, which I took to be some kind of local colloquialism for a coward?” 

Harry gave a small, tight laugh and nodded. “Yes, bit dated though.”

“He came to me the next day and apologized, as only a brutally hungover man can do, and, after I booked him in for a formal therapy introduction session, I asked if he still wanted me to talk to you, he said that he did, but only if you want to hear it. He told me that he understands wanting to distance oneself from difficult relatives.”

“He’s the only one who hasn’t tried to talk to me, to apologize and explain himself. I feel like maybe I should hear him out, if only just to thank him for that, but also…” Harry shook his head. “I’m really not sure I want to forgive him.”

“I think if there is anyone who isn’t expecting to be forgiven, it’s that man.” Christine stood and rummaged through her desk for a short moment and came out with a stack of paper and a ballpoint pen, clearly brought with her from Canada as Harry was sure no one sold anything other than quills in Hogsmeade, and she handed these to him.

“Write a letter to this Neville. You don’t have to send it, but it would do you good to get some of your thoughts out. I can read it over for you, when you are finished, if you like.”

_Neville,_ he wrote on a fresh sheet of paper as he sat in a corner of the Three Broomsticks during their evening rush. His table was littered with crumpled balls of paper, and a glass of ale, mostly empty, and a plate of chips, very cold.

_I’m sorry for being as much of an ass as I could be about your parents. That wasn’t fair and it was mean and petty, which is something I don’t want to be._

_I don’t understand why you, or anyone, worked with Dumbledore, especially after you knew what he intended for me. Even if you only learned the full truth after I was taken by Voldemort, why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you tell people? Why did you leave me there?_

_I don’t actually want you to answer those questions, so please don’t try to. I’m not ready to forgive you, so we’re going to have to figure something else out. We can’t be friends anymore. Maybe one day, but I can’t guarantee that. We’re going to have to just be colleagues for now._

_On that note, though, there is something I do want to talk to you about. You know, I imagine, that I’m studying to be a Mind Healer. It’s a combination of legilimency, psychology and healing, and my psychiatrist believes I’m ready to offer therapy to someone soon. I know you’re struggling. I mean, we all are, aren’t we? I want to help, and if I can help you… well, it might help both of us, maybe? Let me know what you think._

_Both Poppy and Christine, my therapist, would supervise, so you don’t need to worry. If you would be worried about anything. I don’t know._

_Oh, and congratulations on your engagement. You have two very protective people there. Both of them gave me a piece of their mind for upsetting you._

_Harry_

Good enough, he thought, as he rolled up the lined piece of paper by habit and sealed it. He would send it when he got back to the castle, he told himself, and, as he tucked it into his backpack, he noticed Severus’ letter sticking out from between the pages of his book.

His heart jumped in his chest. He’d forgotten all about it, somehow, and as he pulled it out and smoothed it out on the table, next to his chips, his stomach flipped over in apprehension.

Severus had said he had known about Dumbledore’s terrible group. Had he been a member or did he just know it existed? And regardless of which it was, why hadn’t he done anything? Why had he kept it to himself? Why hadn’t he told Harry? Why had he let Harry be taken? Had he known where Harry had been kept? If Draco had known to come to find him there, the others in the group would have known to, wouldn’t they? Had Severus just left him there? When Harry had come back to him, had he just… lied? Pretended that he’d known nothing?

Harry had trusted him. Had come back to him and they… they’d had sex. Harry had trusted him after everything that had just happened to him. Severus hadn’t… hadn’t had sex with him knowing everything that had happened. Hadn’t pretended to know nothing as Harry had poured his heart out, had cried. Severus wouldn’t do that, couldn’t have done that, right?

There had to be a reason. Harry had to trust that there was a reason. He had to. He was pretty sure he might just lose what was left of his mind if he couldn’t trust Severus.

He took a shaky drink of his beer and picked up the letter.

_I must make a full disclosure,_ Harry read this over again and sucked in a deep breath, _I did know about Albus’s secretive group. I was apparently named a member from its early days, although I didn’t know of its existence until quite late – only weeks before the battle. When I learned of it, I attended one meeting in order to discover for myself what the purpose, membership, and goals were of the group, and when I had done so, I did not return. I regretted it immediately, although I was glad to know something, anything about what was planned for you, even if the information was clearly suspect. I don’t like being in the dark when there is information to be had._

_Dumbledore said the group’s purpose was to fulfill the prophecy to see to Voldemort’s death, but also to see to your own ‘health and wellbeing’, which is laughable. Likely, he only wanted to ensure that you survived long enough to fulfill your purpose and that they made sure you didn’t top yourself or run away._

Harry rolled his eyes at that, even as he let out a long breath. He suddenly realised just how tense his body had grown over the last few moments. He dropped his arms, letting the paper touch the table, and he rolled his shoulders and his neck cracked loudly. It felt as if a massive weight had been lifted from his shoulders to know that Severus hadn’t been part of it. He’d kept things from Harry, which wasn’t ideal at all, but in the long line of betrayals that Harry had endured, it was a very minor one. 

He picked up the letter again, it smelled faintly of mountain air and wool, as all of Severus’s letters had, and kept reading.

_I had no desire to continue attending their meetings. Dumbledore, as I know now, was in the advanced stages of legilimency-induced cerebral necrosis, and he seemed quite clearly off his rocker, although he had never been fully seated to my knowledge. The others were all emotionally drained and clinging to the hope that what they had done was for a greater purpose. Longbottom expressed that he had done it to ensure that you would survive, and he had explained to me beforehand that they believed that, had they not orchestrated you ‘loving’ the Dark Lord and fulfilling the prophecy, you would have perished in the final battle as well._

_While I am grateful that you are alive, the cost of your survival seemed extremely unbalanced compared to the fulfillment of the prophecy (which we know to be false, in either case) and so even if I did not have the relationship that I did (and perhaps do) with you_ – at this, Harry grinned so widely, his cheeks hurt – _I could hardly sanction their methods._

_I am sorry that you’re having such troubles with your godfather. The Boundaries is a vast unknown, and we can’t fathom what effects there might be on those who return from it. I hope that someone is making a study of both him and the Longbottoms._

Hermione was doing just that, Harry knew. She had aggressively sought a position with the Department of Mysteries as an Unspeakable, and had managed to convince them both of her sincerity in their cause and her plan to follow their endless rules, but Hermione had always been craftier than anyone gave her credit for. The department was the only one doing research on the Boundaries and she wanted to know what they knew. 

She had always been rather obsessive about her interests, but her desire to know everything about the Boundaries put it all to shame. Her single minded focus was almost worrying, but Ron assured Harry that he was doing what he could to keep her grounded in their own world, even as she sought the other. Even so, it was all she talked about, and the fact that Harry had been there as well was something she wouldn’t let go. She asked him endless questions about what he had experienced there, and he had already exhausted everything he could think of to tell her. She intended to become the head of the Department of Mysteries as quickly as possible, because only the head of the department had full access to their archives. Harry had no doubt whatsoever that she’d accomplish it. 

_Perhaps I will talk to them myself when I return to Hogwarts. Yes, you have read this correctly. I am now able to travel and have decided to return to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts, as your godfather has apparently been unable to provide adequate tutelage, at least to satisfy the Headmistress’ standards. She asked me, begged to be more precise, and while I feel I am doing good work here in Tibet, I cannot help but think that I could do more if I returned._

_We could, at the very least, communicate with one another in person, rather than by these infernal birds._

Harry knocked over his heavy glass of beer, sending what little was left of it into his chips. His hand, not holding the letter, rose shakily to cover his open mouth.

_I have booked my portkey, but I am in a rather remote area and it will take several weeks for it to be shipped to me. I will be extremely displeased if it arrives after the date I booked the blasted thing to be active for, but we shall see. If all goes well, I will be arriving back to Hogwarts on the morning of August 11th. I had hoped that I could be back before your birthday, but I suppose a very sincere Happy Birthday will have to suffice for now._

_It’s unlikely a message from you will reach me here in Tibet before I return, so please save any replies until then._

_Yours,  
Severus_

Harry stared at the page and read the last paragraph over again. His eyes scanned the room frantically and he stumbled over to a nearby table where Rosmerta was taking someone’s order.

“What day is it?” He demanded of her, his throat dry and catching, and she stared at him as if he had come over and removed his entire head and tried to hand it to her.

“What? Are you time travelling now? I wouldn’t put it past you kids.”

“No, no,” he shook his head violently. “It’s August 11th, isn’t it? Today?”

“Yes, dear. It was all day,” said the elderly witch seated at the table. She had the menu in her hands and gave him a look of barely contained impatience. “Did you forget an appointment?”

“I… I think I did! One that I didn’t even know I had.”

“Best get to it then, young man,” she said and then rather pointedly turned back to Rosmerta and began placing her order.

He turned on his heel, grabbed his bag and rushed from the pub. 

It was dark out when he emerged. He’d been at Hogwarts in the morning, then with Christine for the early afternoon and had then spent the better part of the evening writing his stupid response to Neville, so now it was fairly late. He tore down the road back to the school, cursing that he couldn’t just apparate or that he hadn’t thought to bring his broom, and when he finally arrived back at Hogwarts, he all but flew down the steps to the dungeon and down the hall to where Severus had had his rooms.

He stood by the hidden entrance, his heart beating, his throat tight, and the stone girl, chin resting on her knees, turned her eyes toward him and smiled.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit of a short one this time, but I wanted to get something out (especially after leaving you all with that cliffhanger for so long).
> 
> BUT I've finally got these two in the same room! I hope you enjoy their awkwardness as much as I did.

The twins were clearly put out by the change in their environment and schedule, as they both fussed and cried throughout the day, and by the early evening, Snape was glad to finally put them down in their new nursery and be done with them. 

He had been surprised, as he had taken stock of his former rooms, to discover that the door to Harry’s room was still present through the shared washroom. He knew he had vanished it from its place in the sitting room in a fit of pique and despair, but he clearly hadn’t been thinking well enough to vanish the room as a whole for he found it as carefully ministered by the house elves as the rest of the space. Harry’s room smelled of waxed wood and freshly laundered linen. The faux-window above the desk let in bright sunlight and set off golden tones in the stray bits of dust in the air. The bed, unused for far longer than the year of his absence, was neatly made with its burgundy duvet and white sheets. The abandoned clothes were all, for once, neatly stowed in the wardrobe, and, at the foot of the bed, Harry’s broom leaned as if waiting to be taken up. 

This in itself had been a surprise to him. He knew that Harry had left suddenly, with minimal thought, but he had been back at Hogwarts for some time. Why hadn’t Harry asked the house elves to retrieve any of his things? Surely he remembered they were here and knew that the house elves could access all parts of the castle, hidden or not. Of course, Harry had always had more money than wits and so perhaps he had decided to replace what he was missing, but the Potter invisibility cloak was there, folded neatly and laying waiting on the edge of the bed, and one couldn’t simply go to Diagon Alley and replace that. 

The room, as it currently sat, was no longer needed. Either he and Harry were to reconcile (and then, Merlin willing, they wouldn't need more than the one bed) or they were to not, and then whatever rooms Harry was currently occupying would be a far better option than sharing rooms with a pining ex lover. 

It would suit for a nursery, he decided. The twins slept through the night now, and his own dark, windowless bedroom wouldn’t be at all appropriate. They weren’t used to that sort of environmental isolation. He summoned a house elf at random, with no one in particular in mind, and a young elf in a floral dress appeared beside him. 

“Professor Snape, sir, you are back. Welcome home.”

He gave her a curt nod and then waved his hand around the room.

“Please arrange to have the contents of this room shrunk down and packed up.” 

“And delivered to Harry Potter? We can be doing it.”

He didn't condescend to ask how she recognized the owner of Gryffindor bedding, a high end racing broom and an invisibility cloak. "No. You can leave the box in the front room and I will deliver it to its owner personally.”

She nodded, her keen eye taking in and clearly analysing the contents of the room, and then she nodded again. "Should we be leaving the room empty?”

“No. I will need it set up into a nursery.”

She stared blankly at him for a long moment until her eyes grew round as saucers.

“You be having babies here? Tiny ones? Can I… could I be seeing them, sir?”

“They are sleeping now, but if you are quiet, I cannot see why not.”

He led the small house elf back out to the sitting room, and she approached the cot with a hushed reverence, as though she had happened upon something rare and sacred, like a newly born unicorn colt. She curled her hands over the edge of the cot and lifted herself up onto her toes to peer down at them, and Snape glanced down at them as well. They really were quite darling as they slept, with their thin eyelids lined with dark lashes and their pink mouths pursed in sleep. They were also blessedly quiet, which was a joy in and of itself.

The house elf lowered herself back to her feet and said, “They are beautiful.” She had tears in her eyes as she said, “We can be watching them for you? If you be needing help? Some of us were nanny elves before the war and I – we – be missing babies, sir.”

“I cannot pay you very much for your services.”

She drew herself as tall as she could and said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but we would not be taking your money. Not for this.”

He made a show of thinking it over, but it was hardly an offer he was going to decline. If he was to be teaching again, he'd not be able to have eyes on them at every moment, especially since he didn't want news of them to reach the likes of Rita Skeeter. He couldn’t very well take them with him to class, even if he strapped them up in that ridiculous sling and hid them beneath his robes.

“I am grateful for the offer, Miss…”

“Libby, sir,” she offered with a wide smile and he couldn't help but return it with a nod.

“Libby. You, and any other house elf you trust, are most welcome to help care for my daughters. I would appreciate and value the help. I assume that you will abide by the house elf creed of confidentiality in this as other household knowledge?”

“Of course." She gave him a look of keen disappointment. “Who are you thinking I be? I am not one of your gossipy ghosts. I am a respectable elf.”

She frowned deeply, as if debating whether to take him further to task for his presumption but then clearly decided against it and said, “The nursery is done and you can be finding a bellcord by the door when you be needing one of us to watch the tiny ones. I hope you and your small ones will be having a good evening.” And she disappeared after one last glance toward the cot.

He went in and found the room had been decorated in sunny pastels with pictures of rabbits in blue coats and poultry in bonnets. The house elves had clearly pulled the design from his memory using their own innate legilimency powers, and although he could identify the memory they had used, it was still as obscure and mysterious as it had been in his youth. It was something he had seen in a shop window as a child, and, at the time, it had captured his imagination just as easily as Lily Evans had done years later and for the same reason. The colours were so bright and beautiful and completely alien to the soot and grime covered reality that was his own neighbourhood, where everything was covered in a film of grey, both from the coal the houses burned to combat the constant damp chill and from the towering chimneys of the factory that overlooked their cramped community. 

The room looked nauseatingly quaint, and, in his mind’s eye, Snape could see his father sneering over it. Frivolous. Waste of money. Once, not even so long ago, Snape would have listened to that voice. When he had been a child, heeding that voice had once meant the difference between pain or not and even when the man himself was no longer there to exact his control, the memory of his voice, of his disdain and his anger, had always been enough to keep Severus on a narrow path. But Tobias Snape was dead and gone and was never going to have a place in the lives of his grandchildren. Let the room be cheerful. Let these children have beauty and joy in their lives. 

He should let the house elves do something similar to the rest of his rooms, Snape thought with a satisfied smirk. Perhaps not pastel and bunnies, but he could at least let them install the same magical windows in the other rooms and let some sunlight in. He had spent the last year in the sun and, despite the rumours of vampirism that had plagued him through his previous tenure at Hogwarts, he had not combusted under its gaze. He had actually developed something of a thin tan, wonder of wonders.

He had attempted to levitate the cot from the sitting room, babies still asleep in it, but as he set it down under the fanciful mobile of becoated rabbits and floating carrots, he jostled them and they awoke to renewed screams in the face of the wrongness of their situation.

Snape sighed and pushed aside his intentions to create a new course plan for the year. He had no idea what textbooks the dogfather had been using, if any, but he had no intention of using anything but the best. He wasn’t to teach for more than the single year (unless the year went spectacularly better than any he had previously endured which seemed unlikely) and he intended to make the best of it.

Despite what passed for common knowledge at Hogwarts, he had never wanted to teach Defense. That had been Voldemort's demand of him, always unfulfilled, in a bid to impress the siren call of the dark arts upon the children, but Snape had seen how badly the students could bugger up even his careful instructions for potions and the idea of students running about the castle misfiring dark spells every which way was more than he was willing to endure. Now that the bastard was dead, and properly so, he was willing to teach the subject if it meant he had the liberty to teach it properly.

The twins renewed their screams, louder now that he hadn’t immediately come to their rescue, and so he turned himself away from his thoughts to go and collect them. 

They kept him extremely busy for the rest of the day. Belladonna wanted nothing to do with anything of her new environment. She didn’t like the nursery. She didn’t like the sitting room. She didn’t like the formula the elves delivered. She didn’t like the water. She didn’t like the sounds of the castle, or the smell. She was furious with her sister and with him. There was no appeasing her.

Ophidia was quieter, of course, but it was clear that she was just as put out by the changes as her sister. While Belladonna screamed and refused the formula, Ophidia, ever curious, tried it, but after several mouthfuls, she decided against it and turned her head _toward_ her sister to vomit it up. Belladonna, unsurprisingly, did not appreciate this and screamed at her sister and then at him as he took her in for a bath.

They had once been happy, his parents, or so he was told. His father, Tobias, had once been a happy man, laughing and joking. He had seen pictures of his mother, Eileen, in her youth – sparkling dark eyes and shining hair, an impish smile. They had been young and carefree and in love. His father had a racing car that he had built from the ground up as a teen, a Cooper Bobtail (pictures of which had been placed lovingly in the central position on the mantle), a car he had raced and won. The other boys, even the older, bitter men, had envied that car, had envied Tobias’s success and potential. He was going to get out of Spinner's End. He was going to take Eileen to Italy, live under the sun, race his car and eventually they would design their own racing cars. His mother had had a good eye for design; his father, the self-taught knowledge of engineering. 

And then Eileen became pregnant. They had to get married. It was ahead of schedule for their plans, but they were in love. It would still work, they thought.

But it was a rough pregnancy. She was constantly sick, needing expensive medication and rest. Her hair fell out in clumps and eventually grew back thin and limp. Her skin took on a yellow sheen. She was listless and weak. Her family refused any support. They were strange people, rude, condescending, and positively medieval, with a house full of mysterious potions in glass vials, leeches. Tobias wanted nothing to do with them. 

And so he had had to find steady work at the same factory that towered over Spinner’s End, the same factory at which his father had worked, his grandfather had worked, and eventually had to sell his beloved car. Italy was a pipe dream now, after all, as unreachable as the stars. The car was expensive to maintain. And he was tired all the time, too tired to race and getting too old for it anyway. His wife was sickly. His child was strange. Wrong. The house was always a disaster as his wife hadn’t the energy to keep up with it. His back began to hurt something fierce; a terrible twinge in his lower back that gave him blistering headaches, and the only thing that helped was a drink. And why shouldn’t he drink? Booze was cheap. All the men drank. It made his wife’s god awful cooking go down. It helped him sleep. The whelp was always screaming. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to have a drink or two whenever he wanted?

Severus grew up with them in decline. The older he got, the more miserable everyone seemed to be. His mother never said (although his father never minced words, especially not after a few drinks), but Severus could see what he had done to her. What he had done to his father. What he had done to the two of them.

It was moments like this, when the task of fatherhood seemed impossible, when Ophidia seemed at her most calculating and malicious, when Belladonna would not stop her screams, that Snape felt the heavy presence of his father the most. 

The rest of the afternoon went along the same vein and by evening, the three of them were exhausted, and the twins finally, _finally,_ fell asleep. He cautiously settled them into the cot, cast a reverse muffliato over them to dull any incoming sounds, and then summoned a pair of house elves to watch over them. He was going to get himself a glass of something strong, take a blisteringly hot bath and then sleep as long as the twins would let him.

This was, of course, when the chime to his door sounded.

He swore and leaned his forehead against the cool wall of his washroom. 

“Minerva McGonagall, you are going to regret the day you met me,” he said against the wall. 

He would give her points for using the door instead of the floo, but it would never balance out the negative points she’d earned for her atrocious timing. Worse, oh worse, he had the sudden horror that he would open the door and discover some sort of welcome wagon of professors, that she had told people he was back, that Hagrid had brought him a cake, that Rolanda would want to drink his booze and regale him with Quidditch stories, that Trelawney would waft her ghostly arse through his walls and coo over the babies.

He glanced at his bath and contemplated ignoring the door, but the chime sounded again, and he pushed himself off the wall with a deep and encompassing sigh.

“You can bloody well come in,” he growled as the chime sounded again and flicked his hand toward the short set of stairs leading up to his door.

Snape turned away to pour himself several fingers of whisky, because if he was expected to socialise, he was going to do it with a drink in hand and absolutely no offer to share.

He heard steps down the stairs, hesitant, and then silence for a moment before, “You came back.”

The tumbler fell from his fingers and shattered against the stone floor.

Harry stood in the entry to his sitting room, one hand clasped tightly about the wrist of his other. He stared down at the shattered crystal, his mouth parted in surprise.

And he looked good. He looked very good. He wore dark denim and a cotton t-shirt and a thick cardigan, quite simple, but it was clear he’d been shopping for clothes that fit rather than satisfying himself with cast offs as he had always done before. His hair was cut cleanly at the shoulder, falling in soft yet still riotous waves, and he looked good. He looked healthy. The haunted look, the dark circles, were gone. He looked so very good.

Harry looked up from the shards on the floor and met his eyes, and for a breathless moment, they stared at one another. Harry made an aborted move forward, but caught himself and shifted uneasily on his feet.

“You look good,” he said and smiled. Snape’s breath caught in his throat. “You’re so tan. I didn’t know you tanned. And it looks like someone’s finally been feeding you. You look… You look good.”

“As do you,” Snape said, his voice sounding strained and rough to his own ears. “You’ve been shopping.”

Harry glanced down at himself and gave a small, stunted laugh. “I didn’t… I left without much of anything but the clothes I had on. It was go shopping or go naked,” he said and then flushed red and ducked his head. His eyes fell on Ophidia’s duck, which was half tucked under the edge of his new sofa, and Harry bent to collect it. He turned it over in bemusement and then asked, “What’s this?”

“A duck,” Snape replied and felt a wave of panic sweep over him. He needed to tuck that in beside her before she woke, or he would never hear the end of it. He needed to get it away from Harry before he asked any questions Snape wasn’t ready to answer.

“Clearly,” Harry grinned at him and gave it a small squeeze. It made a pathetic squeak and Harry’s grin widened, bright and sunny in the dark space. “Were you planning on taking a bubble bath?”

“No – I, yes, well. No. Not a bubble bath, but yes, I was about to take a bath. It’s been a… it’s been a long day. I had no plan to include the duck.”

Harry glanced over to the wall behind which hid the bath and his expression froze, the smile sliding from his face. “Where did my… where did the other door go?”

Snape looked back at it. “Ah, I removed it.” He very nearly explained further – he very nearly said there was a nursery there now, that there were children there now, that they had made children, who were sleeping, who were beautiful, but he pinched his mouth closed around the words. It wasn’t the time.

“Oh, oh. Where… um, where are the things that were in the room?”

“There,” Snape nodded to the box that sat close to where Harry stood. “Your items are shrunk down. I planned to return them to you when… when we crossed paths.”

Harry swallowed and he bent to pick up the box. He dug a finger through the shrunken items and bit his lip. “Thanks. I, ah, I guess I was going to want these back eventually.”

Their eyes met once again, and Snape held his breath. 

Harry’s eyes fluttered back down and he nibbled at his lip again before he shuffled the box under one arm to extend the other and hold out the rubber duck, its blue eyes wide, its smile inexplicably toothy.

Snape moved to take it from him. Their fingers brushed and Snape bit down on the edge of his tongue to keep from giving himself away. 

Harry dropped the hand to his side and clenched it into a fist.

“Well.”

Snape opened his mouth silently and cursed himself.

“Would you… I… Would you care for a drink?”

Harry glanced down at the broken crystal, still in dangerous shards at Snape’s feet, and his lips turned up slightly. “I should let you get that bath. You do look knackered.” He twisted his hand toward the shards and they swept upward through the air and spun themselves back into an intact tumbler, which Snape plucked from the air.

“I’ve been practicing. I thought maybe… Well. It’s been a while since I moved that teacup.”

“So it has.”

Harry gave him another sliver of a smile and said, “It’s good to see you.”

“And I you,” Snape replied on a breath.

Harry's smile widened and he shuffled the box back into both arms and he tilted his head toward the exit. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“I should hope so.”

Harry flushed a lovely pink and dipped his head. “Well, enjoy your bath and I hope you have a good sleep. I’ll… um… I’m glad you’re back home. Hogwarts is… It’s nice to be able to start over, start fresh again, free, yeah?”

Snape felt his pulse throb in his throat and he gave a tight nod. He saw Harry’s tentative expression fall and hated himself for it, but despite everything, he could only see his parents, see his mother’s bruised mouth as his father stood over her, pointing one long, scarred finger at Severus, shouting, _“You want to know where it all went wrong? It’s right there.”_

“Have a good night, Harry.”

Harry nodded, a sharp movement, and he offered Snape another shaky smile before he turned around and left.

Snape heard the door close and his hand tightened on the whisky tumbler. It creaked but held firm in his grip.

**Author's Note:**

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